Every year here in Bend, OR we have “The week of the young child.” It’s a week of activities centered around child development in the first five years of life. Last night I went to a really great free event with several speakers who shared their passions about supporting child development. We heard a lot about pre-literacy and how to prepare young children for reading. But the speaker that moved me most talked about the importance of play in learning and development.
In humans, as in other animals, play is crucial to learning. When children engage in imaginary play they are acting out possible real life scenarios, practicing skills they’ll need as they mature, and processing experiences they’ve had. So, if we want to support our children’s learning and growth, it’s absolutely necessary that we play with them. I want to repeat that, because it’s not just that we ought to allow our children to play or invite their friends over to play with them. We actually need to get down on the floor and play with them.
Today I want to share something I learned from NLP (otherwise known as neuro-linguistic programming) called a “state change”. We’re always in some sort of emotional state, whether happy, sad, excited, or frustrated. And often it feels like we’re at the whim of our emotions. When I’m frustrated it seems like there is no way to transform the frustration into something else. But there is! We can consciously create a “state change” in ourselves and often in others, pretty much any time we want!
This week I watched a fascinating video about baby led breastfeeding. It showed newborn, days old, and months old infants maneuvering themselves into a good nursing position with very little help from their mothers. Babies were deliberate in their movements bobbing and clearly searching for the nipple. And, when they found it on their own, many mothers reported that the latch was more comfortable than it had been when they had tried to help their babies find the nipple. What an incredible innate ability babies have!
We’ve all been there, it’s time to leave, your child wants to stay and continue to play, you’re tired and ready to go, a conflict is brewing. How we handle these difficult moments can be the difference between a fantastic day and a really rough one. And really, either one is available to us in a given moment, we just have to be able to access enough creativity to create the fun, laughter filled connection we’re wanting, rather than falling into a negativity trap.