Losing Touch With Play
When I think of the word play as it first entered my world as a child, my mom would tell us to “Go and play”, meaning that she needed some time to finish whatever she was doing, and we would need to entertain ourselves for the next while. While we didn’t have a house full of toys, we had enough to stimulate our imaginations. I could play cars with my brother, building ramps out of mattresses, or create doll houses by balancing large books against each other. I never had a “real dolls’ house and my brother never had “real” race tracks for his cars. And I firmly believe we were the richer for it.
The tactile sense, or sense of touch, plays a vital role in the young child’s development. When something is touched with the hands or mouth, nerve cells fire messages to the brain, creating pathways of learning as connections are made. The brain then receives the signal and interprets it as “nice”, “threatening” or “interesting”, and files the information for the next play experience. Millions upon millions of connections are made during the first few years of life as the child uses the sense of touch to interpret their world and learn about pleasant versus unpleasant experiences.
Tactile play involves exploring materials with different textures. Babies learn what a block or ball feels like when they place it in their mouths. Toddlers love to play in sand and water, and preschoolers create artworks as they manipulate clay, play dough, paints, glue, stamping, foam and the like. These days many toy designers are aware of the importance of tactile development, and include a variety of textures on the different parts of the toys.
I like to let my children play in quite a traditional manner. They can wash up or makes “boats and submarines” with bowls and measuring spoons while I’m cooking. They build forts in the garden while I’m outside. I’m not really a “Pinterest Mom”, looking for fancy toddler activities to keep them busy. One thing I have noticed on Pinterest though, is many boards focusing on “mess-free” activities for toddlers. An example of this would be putting paint in a zip-seal bag, and letting the toddler squish it around to mix the colours, without getting an ounce of paint on their fingertips. While this might me a convenient activity for us a parents, save us washing up time and dirty clothes, I fear the value and “richness” of the finger painting, as well as the developmental value, might be lost. Toddlers who only experience clean painting activities are developing their visual systems at the expense of their tactile ones.
Why is this a problem? As occupational therapists we are receiving more and more referrals of children who are unable to manipulate materials effectively in their little hands. The brain relies on accurate feedback from the hands, via the sense of touch, regarding the position of the crayon/pencil/scissors. When the tactile system is underdeveloped, the child relies on their eyes to monitor the crayon, meaning the visual system is not free to do its job e.g. watch that the child stays on the line. Children then resort to squeezing their pencils harder, leading to a slower work pace, messy handwriting and shoulder and neck spasticity. Visual learning is compromised as the already over-stimulated system has to multi-task.
I’m glad to say that many Universities, including Cambridge and Harvard, as well as the LEGO Foundation are doing wonderful work promoting awareness of the importance of play in Early Childhood Development (ECD) through evidence-based research. Focus in the preschool years has been thought of as academic preparation for years, teaching children their letters and numbers before they even reach school-going age. I am so hopeful that the new shift towards playful learning through creativity will prepare children for the modern world through more traditional approaches, ensuring that all the senses are involved in play, leading to whole brain development.
So what can we do to ensure that our children have a well developed sense of touch?
1. When they are babies, keep them close. Find out about baby wearing (carrying your baby in a sling/wrap). Get on the floor and play with your baby. Use baby massage as a way to calm them down at bed time.
2. Let your toddlers get messy. They enjoy basic materials like sand and water. Make a place in the garden where they can mix mud pies and play with the hose pipe to their hearts content.
3. Allocate a place in your house where messy play is okay. This could be an indoor or outdoor space. Let the children know that it is okay to experiment with materials here, building and creating while they play. Provide materials such as cardboard boxes, glue, markers, old magazines and newspapers for them.
4. Find a time slot for art work. Art doesn’t need to be perfect. It allows the children to mix and match, see what they like and don’t like, and to be proud of their creations.
Children have an innate need to play at their own pace. When the rules and restrictions from adults are set aside, they will discover their creativity and the sensory systems involved will develop spontaneously in the way that they were designed to.