Episode 7: The Importance of Play

In this episode,

Lizzie digs into the importance of play and how it helps not just children but also adults to strengthen multiple skills. Listen in to examine your relationship to play and see how you can add a little more color to your daily life.

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Post-pod questions to consider

Have you maintained a playful spirit in adulthood? If not, what are three things you can work on to get it back?

Episode Transcript

Hey. You're listening to Midnight Philosopher with Lizzie. Thanks for tuning in. Today, I'm going to talk about something important, and that is play. Playing is fundamental for child development, but it's also really essential for adults. 

Through imagination and make believe, kids learn to master their fears and their hopes and explore their desires and dreams. They learn cause and effect, and they get to process their feelings and their histories. In doing play therapy with kids, sometimes you'll see a kid play out the same scene over and over. This is the similar to when adults will talk about the same subject over and over for several therapy sessions. 

It's called repetition compulsion. And kids are often repeating their play because they're trying to figure out a different outcome or make sense of their feelings. It's the therapist's job to label the feelings for kids. "That seems really scary. I wonder if the dinosaur is sad." And also to highlight strengths. "Wow. It was really brave for that tiger to stand up to the lion who was being mean to him." And to help kids make sense of it. "Even though that doll was really scared to go to school, that doll still got on the bus and went to school." 

And while play is so important for kids to make sense of the world, play continues to be really important for adults. It was for me. In my early twenties, I was pretty sad. And in order to make friends and bring some joy to my life, I joined an adult dodgeball league. We played dodgeball with foam balls wearing no shoes, but just our socks and I kid you not, a children's tumble gym. Talk about tapping into your inner child. 

And this type of play for me did several things. First, it was social, but it took the pressure off me having to make conversation. And secondly, this type of play honed my mindfulness skills. When a foam ball is whizzing at your face, you kinda have to be in the present moment, or else you're gonna get hit by the ball. And mindfulness is really important, because being in the present moment helps heal trauma and conquer anxieties. If you're fully present, you're not reliving what happened in the past or worrying about what comes in the future. I also highly recommend dodgeball for many reasons, but mindfulness is number 1. 

Another time that play was really helpful me for me was as an adult doing improv. Being silly and thoughtful helped me unlock and work through some of my feelings and fears. Improv is letting letting go of control of the outcome. You can only control what you say, but not what the other person says or where the scene ultimately goes. So letting go of control is a really important skill to learn to improve your relationships. You know? You can't control the other person. You have to learn how to give and take. And another thing that improv helped me was was learning that I have a unique perspective and that I should value that because everyone has a unique perspective. But I kind of just assumed people thought the same way I did, and it turns out they don't. 

And a third time that play was really important to me as an adult was when I play board games. I recently played this game called Root with several friends. During the game, I concentrated and thought ahead. I thought about cause and effect and the consequences of my actions. These skills that I enhanced through playing the game are really important ones for my life. Thinking about the consequences of my actions is really good for me because sometimes I make impulsive decisions. And and having that practice in play is a good transferable skill I can then take to the rest of my life. 

So to recap, both kids and adults really learn through play, and it helps in all areas of your life. Play helped me practice mindfulness, improve my relationships, and then curb curb my impulsive decision making. Plus, bonus, sometimes play is fun, and something educational and fun can be hard to come by. 

I personally believe that as people get older, they play less, but play is so beneficial for people of all ages. So why do we play less as we get older? I think it has to do with a couple factors. 
For 1, I think people mistake responsibility as the antithesis of play. Yeah. I threw a big word out there, antithesis. But, really, I think people think that play and responsibility can't go together. But I know this sounds weird. There are ways to make responsibilities kind of fun. For example, if you're cleaning, which I really struggle with and really hate, you can put on a pump up song and dance along, and you can add a certain element of playfulness to your vacuuming. 

Or if you're in a really draining job, you can kind of pretend it's a sitcom. Pretend you're a writer and all your coworkers are the characters in the sitcom, and some of them have secret back stories. I mean, you can even make it kind of, like, a murder mystery. You can make it like, literally, you can make up so many things about your coworkers in this imaginary TV series, and that can be really fun. 

Another thing that happened when I was in school is sometimes I would imagine a purple cartoon character skateboarding around the classroom. And while I wasn't necessarily paying attention to what was going on in school, it did help me stay in the classroom. 

So, basically, playfulness is an approach to life rather than just isolated incidents. While it's true that as an adult, there are a lot more responsibilities, after age 26, our prefrontal cortex is fully developed, which basically means you can think through think through your consequences, think through your thoughts. And if we have the ability to do this, then we have the ability to think of more ways to add play to our life. 

Because, yes, life is busy and life is hard, and there are a lot of responsibilities. And play is crucial for learning skills, for developing yourself, and for getting outside your comfort zone. So go out there and play. 

Well, thanks for listening to my podcast. I'm gonna go play a board game now. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, @TheMidnightPhilosopher. Okay. Well, I hope you have a good night.