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Changing Times, Changing Play: Promoting Quality Play Today!

4/23/2018

24 Comments

 
by Diane E. Levin, Ph.D., Professor of Education, Wheelock College

I have been teaching a course on children’s play at Wheelock College for many years. I always have students interview someone over age 50 about their play when they were young.  I ask them to compare what they learn with their own play when they were young and with a child they know today.  Students are often surprised by what they learn.  Parents or grandparents, generally describe playing outside with neighborhood children whenever they had free time, from a very young age. They had few formal toys—maybe a ball and a bicycle, if they were lucky, for outside, and a few board games for inside, with girls having a doll or two and boys having a few cars and trucks, and maybe a small train set. 
 
Very few of my play students know children today who go outside to play in this same way.  Instead, they describe children spending most of their free time inside involved with screens, or playing with toys that are realistic replicas of what they see on screens, many of which are highly gender-divided (Van Hoorn, Nourot, Scales & Alward, 2015).[*]  When children do go outside to play now, it is usually either in their own yard, with an adult there to supervise them. Or they participate in organized sports activities with fixed rules, often from a very young age, overseen by adults.  And parents often report that their children say they are “bored” when they are told to turn off their screens and play!
 
Thus, many of today’s young children have limited opportunities to engage in the kinds of quality child-created and child-controlled play that promotes optimal development and learning (Linn, 2008).  And when I asked experienced teachers about changes they have seen in play since they began teaching, many described children having more difficulty becoming engaged in “free” play now, often needing more structure and direction during playtime, and having shorter attention spans, even when they to get involved in something (Levin, 2013).
 
Parents can do a lot to help their children become less dependent on screens and more engaged with play in the real world.  They can set up specific rituals and routines for when their children can use screens and for which screens they can use.  And they can help their children reconnect to the power and excitement of play in the real world by developing rituals and routines for play—and helping them develop real interests and skills in their play. 
 
One of the best ways to get started doing this is not by just handing down dictates about what children can and can’t do, but by creating fun and meaningful play times for the whole family, so children get excited about play.  Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment, an organization I co-founded 25 years ago, has created just the right resource for helping families become engaged in play together. TRUCE Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring FAMILY PLAY PLANS provide a wide range of activities families can play together each season of the year.  Once a family gets started there are many ways to branch off, based on the ages, interests and skills of the children.  Enjoy!
 
References
Levin, D.E. (2013).  Beyond remote-controlled childhood: Teaching young children in the media age.  Wash., DC:  National Assoc. for the Education of Young Children.
Linn, S.  (2008).  The case for make believe:  Saving play in a commercialized world.  NY, NY: The New Press.
Van Hoorn, J., Nourot, P.M., Scales, B., & Alward, K.R.  (2015).  Play at the center of the curriculum (6th Ed.).  Boston, MA: Pearson.

24 Comments

six-year-old zombie killers

11/28/2016

4 Comments

 
by Katharina D.

The Walking Dead, a TV horror drama popular among adults, is now marketing their show to kids with the introduction of The Walking Dead toys that can be found in big-box toy stores. Walk into your local toy store and you can find The Walking Dead dart guns, affectionately labeled “toy blasters” by the store. The age recommendation on these dart guns is six years and up, a far cry from the 14+ TV age rating for the television show. Children can now chase each other around, pretending to be zombie killers, attacking each other with foam bullets. In addition to the dart guns, The Walking Dead action figures and construction sets can also be purchased at the same toy stores. While your eight-year-old manipulates his action figures to kill all of the zombies in his pretend world, he can also learn to shoot them himself with his own personal dart gun.

An introduction to this show through these toys could very possibly lead to a child’s desire to watch the show and imitate it. This poses a challenge for parents of young children who are concerned about the affect this show may have on their kids. Due to the way children’s brains develop, their understanding of media content is different from that of adults. Young children have difficultly differentiating between what is pretend and what is real, challenging their understanding of the zombies and violence portrayed in The Walking Dead. Introducing a child to a show about a scary and complex concept that is in fact, fictional, can not only spark nightmares and fears within the child, but also confuse them about reality. Additionally, they may view the violence in a black and white perspective, killing the “bad guys” because they are bad, without understanding the causes or consequences of the violence.

In today’s society where senseless violence seems to be more prominent than ever, it is vital that we help our children to understand the consequences to violence and teach them peaceful alternatives. Introducing a violent TV show such as The Walking Dead through branded toys marketed to children who are far too young to understand the show’s meaning can be detrimental to their development and understanding of violence .


4 Comments

the lego takeover:               less creativity,                         more consumerism                     and more gender division

11/10/2016

2 Comments

 
by Meghan D.
​
During my recent observation of toy marketing in Target, I came across a question that I am still not sure I have found the answer to: Are Legos today a good or a bad toy for children? While I had previously known that Legos are popular among children today, I was unaware of the extent of their domination in toy stores or their vast connection to media culture. These factors came as a shock as I noticed how Legos consume almost 3 aisles of the toy section, leading me to focus on the Lego brand’s promotion of consumerism and gender-divided marketing. 

Let’s take a look at what you see when you shop for Legos today. They’re organized into boxed sets and those sets are categorized by type. For example, one type of set is “City” and in one of those sets you build a ferry. There were about 23 “types” of Lego sets and about 16 of them were linked to media culture, such as Star Wars, DC Super Heroes and Disney Princesses. Even the sets designed for Preschool aged children incorporated media, like Disney Junior, and there were only a few types that were not, such as the “Family” and “Creator” sets.

Another alarming discovery was the indiscreet encouragement of violence. One aisle consisted of only Star Wars and Ninjago sets, which were clearly marketed towards boys. I noticed how on every box, the characters had angry faces and were all fighting and shooting with weapons. Accompanying those sets were Lego character masks and gloves that kids could wear to pretend they were Lego knights. Unfortunately, there were very few containers of just Legos being sold, and those were placed on the bottom shelves.
           
What can we learn about marketing by the Lego brand? They’re promoting consumerism by designing their products so that kids want to collect every set. I’ve concluded that over half of the Lego sets being sold are promoting violence and almost all are stifling creativity, leaving little opportunity for open-ended play. Children who buy these sets are being told exactly what to build, which parts to use to build it and how to put them together.

​I do believe that some children, whom are good players, can go beyond the boundaries being set here and use this “toy” in creative play. However, if you placed a box of mixed Lego’s, with no instruction, in front of most children today, they would become bored and have difficulty figuring out what to build. I’ve concluded that the Lego sets of today are serving as “bad” toys in that they are divided by gender and are doing the playing for children, rather than leaving the building up to them. Additionally, I would label them as a “sold out” toy in that, while they are traditional, they are no longer promoting creative play like they used to but are instead consuming the market and serving to profit the brand for years to come.  
 


2 Comments

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