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| |    Play Is the Work of Children by Dr. Benjamin Spock reviewed by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. Adapted from Baby and Child Care When we see children building with blocks, pretending to be airplanes, or learning to skip rope, we're apt to think, in our mixed-up adult way, that these are just amusements, quite different from serious occupations such as doing homework or holding a job. We are mixed up because most of us were taught in our own childhood that play was fun, that schoolwork was a duty, and that a job was a grind. The baby passing a rattle from one hand to the other or learning to crawl downstairs, and the small child pushing a block along a crack on the floor, pretending it's a car, are both hard at work learning about the world. They are training themselves for useful work later, just as much as the high school student studying geometry. Children love their play not because it's easy but because it's hard. They are striving every hour of every day to graduate to more difficult achievements and to do what older children and grown-ups do. The parents of a one-year-old boy complain that he gets bored with hollow blocks and wants only to fit pots and pans together. One reason is that he knows his parents "play with'' pots and pans and not with blocks. That makes pots and pans more fun. Children play in many different ways. Sometimes they are loud and exuberant or giggly and goofy. At other times, their faces have a very serious, concentrated look. Watch a child painting a picture, for example. She studies the paper, then very deliberately paints a broad red line. Her lips are drawn tight, and you might see her tongue sticking out a tiny bit; her forehead is slightly furrowed. She doesn't even notice that you are there. She is playing.
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