Optimizing Brain Development Through Play

While it has become more accepted that “a child’s work is his play”, this concept has not always been readily accepted.  In the development of curriculum for early childhood education programs, there has been much controversy and argument over which is better for a child’s physical and social development: play versus direct instruction.  This debate has always made little sense to me as it seems similar to asking, “Which is better for crop growth – sun or rain?”

Thankfully, the debate is becoming less pertinent due to the exciting research that is being published every day about the dramatic effect of different types of play upon brain development in children.

To understand the positive and essential influence of play, it is important to understand a few fascinating facts about brain development.  Infants are born with approximately 120 billion neurons in their brain.  Yet, these nerve cells are not well-organized at this early stage of development.  If all proceeds normally, we are born with more neurons than we will ever have again in our lives, as unused neurons begin to die off.  This may sound alarming, but it is a perfectly natural development called “pruning”, whereby the brain begins to develop specialized paths to manage many life activities in an efficient fashion.  The unused nerves become inactive, and the active nerves are organized into pathways for activities such as vision, hearing, movement, and complex thought. 

The brain continues to grow throughout life as neurons add on additional connections (called dendrites) which allow learning to occur.  Each time a child engages in an activity, the pathways of the brain must conduct a complex set of electrical signals that pass from nerve to nerve.  As a child participates in new activity or thought, it forces the brain to create more connections to allow for more rapid processing.  Thus, the brain develops a complex web of connections that allows for every human activity.

  

By the time a child matures into an adult, each neuron has up to 10,000 dendrite connections to other neurons, resulting in over ten trillion connections in the brain.  Of  our nerve cells in the brain, up to 50% are “sleeper neurons”, lying there waiting to be activated by new activity and learning.  This complex process is why play is so critical to brain development.  There is no other human activity that is so perfectly designed to maximize the usage of all of the different processing pathways within the brain.

Play is essential to every aspect of children’s development: social, physical, and cognitive.  Play fosters important social skills, including sharing, turn taking, and developing and consolidating friendships.  Play also teaches children how to cope with feelings such as joy, anger, frustration, and love.  The physical skills of coordination, balance, and fine motor control are required while the child practices various new skills learned through play.  Language development and memory are also stimulated in the learning of rhymes, jokes, and chance.  Through play with toys, young children learn the shapes, colors, sizes and textures of objects as well as their significance.  Play also offers children an opportunity to be creative.  They can experiment and try out their own ideas in playing games.

Each one of the above activities utilizes many different parts of the brain in collaboration, forcing a child’s brain into developmental maturation and creating various efficient and complex systems.  By adolescence, the brain has developed over 150 different types of nerve cells, each with a different function, making brain nerve cells the most diverse cell type in the human body.

The following is a partial list of some of the many different benefits of playing in a child’s development:

•Gives children a sense of power and control

•Promotes imagination

•Allows for investigation and repetition

•Promotes longer attention spans

•Encourages deeper interests

•Decreases stress

•Allows children to practice different roles

•Encourages language development and memory

•Teaches children about rules and values of their culture

•Fosters important social skills, including sharing, turn taking, coping with feelings

•Builds physical skills of coordination, balance and fine motor control

•Enhances self esteem as child succeeds in play

•Is fun!

As is true with many human activities, the type of play that children engage in follows relatively predictable patterns at different stages of development.  The following timeline represents the typical activities that are often seen at different stages in the child’s development:

Birth – 6 Months:

•Begins social play and interaction with caregivers (looking, smiling, moving, etc.)

•Plays with fingers (early eye-hand coordination)

•Holds and looks at small toys

•Reaches and grasps rattle

•Holds rattle with two hands; shakes rattle; places in and out of mouth

6 Months – 10 Months:

•Stretches to reach small toys and holds toys with both hands

•Passes toy from hand to hand

•Starts to look for toys hidden from view

•Drops toy and watches to see how and where it falls

•Bangs and slides toys on surfaces to see how this sounds

•Pokes objects with index fingers

•Holds toys between thumb and index finger

•Able to take wooden pegs/shapes out of holes

10 Months – 15 Months:

•Begins to pick up small objects using thumb and index finger

•Starts to show a hand preference

•Enjoys sound-making toys and repeats actions to make sounds

•Pushes and pulls large toys

•Imitates activities such as ringing a bell or rattling a spoon in a cup

•Enjoys imitating adult “play type” speech sounds

•Gives a toy to adult when asked (and sometimes spontaneously)

•Plays social games like Pat-a-cake

•Begins to show an interest in pictures

15 Months – 24 Months:

•Intense exploration of environment, especially looking in boxes, bags, drawers

•Develops more coordination in pincer grasp

•Holds a crayon and imitates scribbling

•Enjoys putting objects in and out of containers

•Enjoys brief times of pretend play with doll house, small dishes, etc.

•Enjoys Picture books, especially if with noises

•Enjoys nursery rhymes and will try to join in

•Points to body parts

•Uses single words and some short phrases

Year Two:

•Uses push and pull-along toys well

•Builds a tower of 6 – 7 blocks

•Draws by scribbling in circles; can imitate a straight line

•Recognizes fine details in picture books; names and turns pages

•Exhibits definite hand preference

•Rides and steers a small push-along toy using feet

•Asks names of people and objects constantly

•Puts two or more words together to form simple sentences

•Experiments with water, sand, play dough; not able to plan or produce final product

•Shows interest in pretend play

•Understands what miniature toys represent and how to play with them

•Early parallel play

Year Three:

•Matches shapes and three or more colors

•Copies a circle and very basic human figures with a head

•Cuts with scissors

•Enjoys wide variety of toys and materials

•Enjoys listening to stories

•Repeats nursery rhymes

•Participates in prolonged make-believe play – transitions into symbolic play

•Early stages of cooperative play

Years 4 – 5:

•Counts out 5 or more objects correctly

•Drawings become more detailed – arms, legs, body

•Climbs on equipment or trees

•Pedals a bike easily

•Enjoys building toys

•Completes more complicated jigsaw puzzles

•Plays well with miniature toys such as doll house, farm sets, etc.

•Enjoys early rule games

•Enjoys imitative play with peers, such as doctor, school, etc.

Years 5 – 8:

•Increased gender specific play

•Enjoys more organized games and activities, with increased focus upon rules

•Beginning team sports with usage of gross motor skills

As was discussed earlier, it is clear that play is a critical and necessary facet of a child’s development.  Parents often ask in what ways they can help their child to play most effectively.  The most important thing that a parent can do is to consistently let the child know that play is an important activity in every day of the child’s life.  Even when children must face the demands of a challenging academic schedule, it is important that the parent models through her own behavior the importance of engaging in some playful activity each day.  Here are some other things that parents can do to enhance their child’s play experiences:

•Be attentive; maintain good eye contact and get down on child’s level

•If possible, have regular, uninterrupted playtime to let child know you value play

•Listen first, reflect and then respond

•Model communication skills

•Communicate thoughts and feelings sincerely

•Encourage your child to express feelings and opinions while playing; listen when child speaks

•Let the child lead

•Don’t make comparisons to other siblings or friends

•Focus on what child does not how well child does – describe this for child

•Make memories; record funny moments and accomplishments

It is also important to pay attention to the various different materials that are available for your child’s play.  Allowing the child to create his own materials is often the best way to encourage a child’s excitement about participating in different play activities.  Other guidelines that I often share with parents regarding optimal materials to help children engaging play are as follows:

•Materials should be simple, flexible, and open-ended to best encourage creativity

•Materials should be safe and age-appropriate

•Materials should be appropriate for a wide variety of uses

•Materials should be flexible enough to use for continually-developing mind

•Materials should provide opportunities to develop fine-motor skills

•Materials should encourage language development

•Materials should support activities to learn cooperation, helping and sharing

•Materials should provide opportunities for problem solving

•For example: Building blocks, mobiles, music boxes, unbreakable mirror, push toys, balls, climbing equipment, empty food cartons, beads and thread, doll houses, action figures and dolls, paper and paint/crayons/markers, play dough, dress-up clothes, books, music, board games.

In summary, during the child’s development, there are many critical brain pathways that are being developed and honed through the various activities that a child engages in.  The many different variations of play are the building blocks for this optimal brain development.  Through varied play activities that include imagination, movement, language, and practice, a child’s brain is stimulated creating the opportunity for further brain development.  Optimal development of the central nervous system occurs with a combination of varied stimulation of many pathways and repetition of specific actions to create coordination and efficiency.  Discovery and fantasy lead to new understanding.  With new understanding, a child repeats many of the steps that they have learned before creating behaviors that optimize social, physical, and cognitive development.