How Children And Adults Can Thrive Through Creative Play

Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash

It’s Sunday night. I’m sitting on my couch, laptop in my lap doing the work required by teachers everywhere…work to prepare myself for the upcoming work week. I don’t know if this is a thing that other professions struggle with, but in teacher-land, we call it the “Sunday Scaries.” It's a sometimes inescapable feeling of anxiety that comes on what should be a day of rest. Instead, I’m scrambling to catch up on what needs to be done before Monday morning and silently judging myself for daring to have a relaxing weekend free of work.

“Momma, will you play with me?”

It’s my five-year-old, and I knew the question was coming before he even asked it.

Can I play with him? I have lots of work to do. I’m stressed. I’m exhausted. Frankly, at the moment I want nothing more than to just zone out and endlessly doom-scroll through social media, or play a ridiculous match-3 game. Something, ANYTHING, that doesn’t involve exerting any mental or physical effort.

“Momma’s working, buddy.”

I feel a sense of guilt even uttering the words because I know what he’s going to say next.

“Can we play something and you can still sit on the couch.”

That one hurts. It shows me that he knows my patterns. Sometimes, Momma is too tired to play, for any myriad of reasons.

The thing is, as a teacher and a parent, I know just how important play is. I also know that if I get up and play, I will feel better! It’s likely that my son wants to play his favorite game, “chase me.” It’s a very complex game, but I’ll see if I can explain it here. My son runs around in circles…and I chase him. We take turns with who is chasing who, and your turn ends when you catch the other person. There are lots of laughs and usually more than enough nips at my feet from the dog who doesn’t really understand that it’s a game. It’s good exercise and usually ends up being really good fun.

As a public school teacher in America, I feel that we have moved too far away from allowing children to learn through play in schools. We are too busy preparing Kindergarteners for college readiness to let them learn the social skills and problem-solving tools that play allows them to develop. We focus on “social emotional learning,” but we too often forget the social aspect. We limit their time for creativity and expression in art and music classes in favor of more reading and math. All in the name of higher test scores. We are so afraid to fail our children that we are doing it everyday.

The thing that standardized testing lacks which play has in abundance is creativity! As an elementary school band teacher, I see every day how much children thrive in creative environments. Learning an instrument is not (contrary to popular belief) easy for a 9 or 10-year-old to accomplish. There is SO much to think about when playing music in an ensemble. To put it simply, you must read, count, translate, watch, listen, and coordinate your fingers and breath…all very quickly. It’s hard, even for adults, and yet children tell me all the time that they wish they could come to band class more often. They thrive when they get to use these other areas of their brain. It’s not so much of a “break” from work, as it is a different kind of work.

For children, play is serious work! It allows them to explore their world in a safe environment. They can test the waters to learn what they enjoy and where their strengths lie. They learn social skills and boundaries, and develop passions that are more likely to lead them to a future career than taking a standardized test ever will. My brother, who works in architecture, discovered his passion for designing and building while playing with Legos as a child. I decided that I wanted to be a music teacher in 5th grade because playing the flute unlocked an exciting new world for me.

All too often, adults fall away from learning through play, but it really can be transformative. As adults, we use “games” fairly frequently to trick ourselves into doing work and motivate ourselves into doing tasks we aren’t excited to do. Have you ever participated in a fitness challenge? Are you busy trying to “close the rings” on your Apple Watch? If so, then you know what I’m talking about. If not, think back to the summer of 2016 and remember how many people were suddenly outside walking because of the release of Pokemon GO!

Over the past year, I have discovered a passion for tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) such as Dungeons and Dragons. I’m sure a lot of my friends are probably wondering why I suddenly went full-nerd, but anyone who has played a TTRPG can understand immediately. TTRPGs are basically immersive community storytelling. You can create a character and be whoever you want to be. You can explore magical lands. You can work with a team of friends in a safe and fun environment to solve problems in creative and often completely over-the-top ways.

Not sold yet? Well…you can do all of this without even leaving your couch. You’re welcome, my exhausted friends!

TTRPGs are a great way for children to exercise their creative minds, develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and safely face their fears. It’s a very natural way for children to play. When my 5-year-old plays with me, he sometimes speaks like a miniature GM (game master — the person who leads a TTRPG), saying things like, “Momma, pretend that *insert scenario* is happening, and then you do *insert action*.” I’m half expecting him to say something like, “As you walk down the path, you see a darkened cave in front of you. What do you do?”

We played an adorable TTRPG called “Trouble at Santa’s Workshop” with our 5-year-old this past Christmas and he loved it! It was such a joy to watch his face light up as he made his character, came up with ideas to solve the problem (someone stole Santa’s naughty and nice list!), and end up being the hero of the story! Children and such natural and uninhibited role-players! It’s really refreshing and inspiring to watch.

Throughout my deep dive into TTRPGs, I’ve been incorporating some basic elements of Dungeons and Dragons into my classroom. I’m having students roll a d20 (twenty-sided die) when they enter the classroom to “roll for initiative.” In Dungeons and Dragons, this is the way you make your order for who goes first in combat. In my classroom, this is how I decide who can go first when we do anything that we take turns for. It’s the equivalent of me pulling popsicle sticks with students' names on them, but it’s much more fun! The students seem to get the same dopamine hit that I do from simply rolling the dice.

We have also started playing a simple game in band rehearsals called “Musicians vs. Monsters” (patent pending — but not really). Our band (the musicians) and whatever “monster” we are fighting both start with a full circle of points. Our positive actions do damage to the monster, and the monster does damage to us when we are acting “monstrous.” Are we extra chatty and unfocused? The monster loves that!

The students LOVE this game. Everything is more fun when we are playing. It works out great for everyone because sometimes I can simply touch their points slider and it immediately brings them back to focus. They either don’t realize that this game is a simple way to keep them on task, or they are having too much fun to care. They love to help choose the monster for the week and help design the graphics, and they feel a great sense of pride when they win the game! Some of them are even aiming towards a “perfect” game where we defeat the monster without losing any points.

So, since we know adults and children are inspired by games to do things that are normally mundane, why aren’t we all spending more time playing them? I’m here to argue that we should make more time for this joy in our lives, and I’m starting by being that change I want to see in the world.

My birthday is next month, and I’m going to be spending it with my husband and some friends playing some good ol’ Dungeons and Dragons. The group of people we’ve invited is comprised almost entirely of fairly new people (if not brand new) to the magical world of TTRPGs. I’m hoping to use my Birthday Queen influence to get them just as hooked on this specific brand of joy as I am. I couldn’t imagine a greater gift that I could give my friends. So please, take this journey with me, and give yourself the gift of PLAY in your life!

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From https://medium.com/project-rollplay/just-push-play-c72f82a49718