13/07/2026
REAL play is good for humans! It happens when we suspend our sense of time and limitations; when we can utilise one thing and pretend it is another. We support REAL play with loose parts - natural seeds and cones, wooden bits and bobs, general stuff from the forest floor - natural materials, nondescript pieces of material, big and small, cardboard boxes(!), cheap brass or stainless steel cups and jugs from the charity shop, soft dolls and dolls’ clothes, a dolls house (a cardboard box?), a select few heirloom pieces like a little rocking horse, wobble board or laundry frame. Basically, anything that is passive and open-ended, leaving you to decide what it is and how you play with it.
Play that is dictated by an adult or toy manufacturer is not REAL play but an ACTIVITY. Fun as it may be, it doesn’t have the same deeply therapeutic and processing quality and WE ARE LOSING REAL PLAY. Sorry to shout but it’s getting serious. We are over-scheduling formal activities and interfering with the children’s innate and playful nature by just that, interfering. Be with, by all means, especially if your child asks for a playmate; observe as you are recruited as a passenger on the bus or, simply, watch the play as you fold laundry, stir pots, sit with a cuppa but do not interrupt! Give your child time to come out of play, just as you would like time to finish an email, book or said cuppa.
There are huge benefits to embracing and trusting the intrinsic capabilities that are embedded in the very nature of our children and these will serve them throughout their life - self-confidence and motivation, problem solving and creativity, social skills and imagination, healthy central nervous and digestive systems, spatial awareness and physical agility and much more!
You may have heard yourself saying, ‘my child doesn’t play alone’, ‘they get bored’, ‘they have a short attention span’. See what happens if you are mindful of your respect for play and with your interruptions.
I regularly co-opt all sorts of things as play equipment for the children at The Family Cabin - what’s your favourite DIY success? 🙂
