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Seeing Play through Your Child's Eyes
by Dr. Benjamin Spock
reviewed by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P.
Adapted from Baby and Child Care
Your children love to have you play with them if you are willing to play at their level. Let them show you how. Help them if they ask you to. If you've bought them a toy that is too complicated, either let them misuse it in their own way or tactfully hide it until they're older.
A grown-up playing with a child often is tempted to make the play too complicated. Following are three examples of parents playing effectively, or not so effectively, with their young children:
- A mother buys her three-year-old daughter a doll with a whole wardrobe of clothes. The mother would like to dress the doll just right, beginning with the underclothes. But the little child may want to start with the red overcoat. The overcoat is what is important to her--not the underclothes and not "getting it right." If the mother lets the child take the lead, the child will enjoy the doll and her mother's company; eventually, she'll discover on her own how to get all the clothes on. If the mother insists on "teaching," she'll spoil the play.
- Another parent buys her small, sick daughter a box of crayons and a coloring book. The child picks up an orange crayon and rubs it back and forth across the page, not trying to keep within the lines or worrying that she's using orange for sky and grass. It's hard for a parent not to say, "Oh, no, not like that. See, you do it this way.'' But if she says, instead, "I see you like a lot of orange," her daughter might agree, feeling happy that her mother is sharing in her enjoyment.
- A father produces a whole train set for his three-year-old at Christmas. The father, who can't wait to get started, fits the tracks together. But the child has grabbed one of the cars and has shot it across the room, smack into the wall. "No, no!'' says Father. "You put the car on the track like this.'' The child gives the car a push along the track, and it falls off at the curve. "No, no,'' says Father. "You have to wind up the engine and let the engine pull the car.''
But the poor child hasn't the strength to wind up the engine or the skill to put the cars on the track, and he doesn't care about realism yet anyway. After the father has been impatient for 15 minutes, the child develops a strong dislike for tin trains and an uncomfortable feeling of not being able to measure up to his father's expectations, and he wanders off to do something else.
Here the demands of the toy are too complicated for the child. He might, if left alone, enjoy pushing a train car along the floor or along a piece of track. It will take a great deal of restraint for the father to join in the play at that simple level, but if he can, both he and his son will be happier.
Children become interested in dressing dolls properly, coloring carefully, and playing trains realistically at certain stages of development. You can't hurry them. When you try, you only make them feel incompetent. This does more harm than good.
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Created April 09, 2001
Reviewed September 18, 2004
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