Abstract
There is accumulating scientific evidence of the potential of play and playfulness to enhance human capacity to respond to adversity and cope with the stresses of everyday life. In play we build a repertoire of adaptive, flexible responses to unexpected events, in an environment separated from the real consequences of those events. Playfulness helps us maintain social and emotional equilibrium in times of rapid change and stress. Through play, we experience flow—A feeling of being taken to another place, out of time, where we have controlled of the world. This paper argues that spontaneous free play, controlled and directed by children and understood from the child’s perspective, contributes to children’s subjective experience of well-being, building a foundation for life-long social and emotional health. The paradoxical nature of young children’s spontaneous free play is explored. Adaptability, control, flexibility, resilience and balance result from the experience of uncertainty, unpredictability, novelty and non-productivity. These essential dimensions of young children’s spontaneous free play typically produce play which is experienced by adults as chaotic, nonsensical and disruptive. The article concludes with a preliminary discussion of the challenges and possibilities of providing for spontaneous free play indoors, in early childhood care and education programs.
Highlights
Any discussion of young children’s health would be incomplete without some reference to the role of play
This paper explores the potential of spontaneous free play controlled and directed by children themselves, to contribute to children’s experience of a healthy childhood and subjective well-being in the present, as well as to the foundation of life-long social and emotional health
Many early childhood scholars argue that it is time to reflect more critically on the taken-for-granted approaches to play that have evolved in early childhood care and education, defining an intentional pedagogy of play that considers these complex issues and clearly articulates the rationale for a continued pedagogical focus on spontaneous free play, as well as the conditions that support and enhance it in formal early childhood care and education programs [78,79,80]
Summary
Any discussion of young children’s health would be incomplete without some reference to the role of play. The focus of the public policy agenda in Canada and much of the Western world is on combatting sedentary lifestyles and childhood obesity, increasing self-regulation and impulse control, and ensuring school readiness, for young children whose development may be compromised by social and environmental factors. This agenda is instrumentalizing [19,20] and pedagogizing [21] children’s play in the service of adult goals. The barriers, challenges and possibilities of providing for these kinds of spontaneous free play opportunities in group early childhood care and education settings are explored
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