Usually adults believe that there is an age when a person should stop playing, it’s time to leave childhood behind and get serious about life. But there is nothing intrinsically childish about play. Our world is changing with speed, for every two years new “generation” of technology content immerges. Play can helps us to adapt and cope on these changes. The skills of adaptation will involve language communication, strategy planning, abstract thinking, creative problem solving, emotion handling and cooperation. Biologist study said that play not only learn new things but also has the ability to discover thinking, also to create new creation. Among the functions of play is promoting the establishment and maintenance of social bonds. Sharing a board game or a sports field helps to make and keep friends, among adults as well as children. This trend was popular nowadays, they are groups of board game activities held in many place such as in McDonald restaurants, Starbucks Coffee Bean cafes, and even we have Meeples Board Game Café here in Malaysia.
‘A culture with a flourishing tradition of play is more likely to possess “what it takes” to survive than one which does not encourage playful activities’, according to play researchers Apter and Kerr (1991).
Historian James Combs writes, ‘Social groups give meaning to play – sports are a metaphor for life, recreation makes people better workers and citizens, leisure is a legitimate reward for work… Do we in fact learn the “lessons” of play that society wants us to? Do we, for instance, learn sportsmanship and fair play from sports, or do we learn from either playing or watching play to cheat and lie and break the rules and switch teams for more money or throw childish fits or do outrageous things with the expectation of getting away with it? There are clearly both social and antisocial messages from play, approved and unapproved lessons, and often, individual interpretations of what play means’ (2000, p. 8).
‘When we play, we sense no limitations’, says child psychiatrist Lenore Terr. ‘In fact, when we are playing, we are usually unaware of ourselves. Self-observation goes out the window. We forget all those past lessons of life, forget our potential foolishness, and forget ourselves. We immerse ourselves in the act of play. And we become free’ (1999. pp 21, 33).
According to research of psychiatrist Stuart Brown, found many violent criminals did not play as when they are in childhood. They could do so to have a better future in their life.
Article “Active Play And Healthy Development” from web link – http://www.btha.co.uk/btha/our-library/
[accessed 27 Dec 2014]
Research & Enquiry 