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For a dozen years I’ve followed the work of Tom Murphy, an occupational therapist who has been evaluating the motor development of preschoolers. In a typical session he would have kids jump off step stools and hit a beach ball, throw a ball to knock over bowling pins, or sit on the floor building with wood blocks and small people figures. To his amazement, what he’s found is—well, let him tell you: “more and more children are arriving in pre-school lagging in their motor skills.”
I became aware of how the number of children who needed extra help changed over the years from 1999-2011. The program was intended to identify children who needed help before they got to kindergarten. It was an open ended grant, and it gave me a chance to observe several thousand children over those years. When I first started in the pre-schools, I would usually see 2-3 children in each class that were quickly recognized as needing extra help. Twelve years later, I would see as many as half the children in some classes lagging behind in their skills, and needing extra help. It ‘s important to say that kids from low and higher income families showed the same lag in skills.
So we have a whole generation of 3 year olds arriving in pre-schools who have been more sedentary and are less prepared physically than ever before, and what are we doing in pre-school? Policy makers are at odds with basic child development, and are actively pushing providers to turn pre-school into kindergarten, with the misguided notion that pushing academics at an early age will pay off when kids enter school.
Yet children who arrive in pre-school with weak muscles, sagging posture and short attention spans are less and less prepared for the new world of expectations in many pre-schools. They are expected to sit and focus for longer than has ever been expected before, and they are less and less prepared, so it is no wonder they wind up frustrated and acting out.
Ask any pediatrician to describe how often they are prescribing ADHD medication for children under the age of five. We are setting up children for failure rather than success, and we could be doing so much more. If ever there was a “back to basics “ moment, we have arrived, and it is time to resist that urge to push academics on 3 and 4 year olds, and let children play. That’s how they learn.
The remedy sounds blissfully simple: “I was amazed at how many kids who were a year or more behind in their motor skills could catch up quickly as long as they got the chance to learn and experience the right kind of play in pre-school.”
Who or what is interfering with kids’ play?
The causes are varied, but point to a real change in how parents allow their babies and toddlers to play and explore. The 1990s “back to sleep” policy instituted by pediatricians is part of the picture. This well-meaning policy was intended to prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), but created a whole generation of infants missing out on “tummy time.” As infants spend more time on their backs, both in sleeping and in baby seats during the day, they are missing out on learning about their world and moving through developmental milestones. There is a huge increase in children with plagiocephaly (flat heads) that result from spending so much time on their backs while the skull bones are still soft and pliable. Infants are crawling less as parents place them in seats and devices that keep them still. Parents are often tempted to “entertain“ them with a screen or a phone, rather than allowing them to crawl around and risk getting in trouble (which is exactly what babies need to be doing).
Parents want their kids to be safe. They’re prepared to sue if junior is injured. Since preschools serve the public, the public monitors them through government regulations:
Where I live in Massachusetts, the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC), has created excessive new safety regulations that restricts the active physical play that children crave and desperately need. The kinds of simple equipment that used to be found in every center, such as swings and climbers, are fast disappearing in the name of raising safety standards.
Centers that have used play equipment for many years are suddenly told that their play equipment needs a bigger “fall zone,” or fails to meet a new regulation. When modifications prove too costly, most centers simply remove them. It does no good for day care providers to complain, and they must comply with the new rules or risk losing their license to operate.
I firmly believe that government should set high standards for the safety of our children. But in recent years, a strange process of adding more and more regulations and restrictions has produced serious unintended consequences. I do not know why state agencies like the Massachusetts EEC have grown so rigid and out of touch with the community of professionals they oversee. Well-meaning people are mostly “following policy” that they did not create. Why create rules that restrict children from being children, and keep teachers and day care providers from doing what they know is best practice?
Government helps to create the problem that it provides grants (such as the one Tom Murphy describes) to study. Yet government is confused because parents are confused about what’s best for their kids and don’t demand more realistic leadership. And why are parents misguided?
One reason is that American culture thinks of motivation as carrot and stick. Economic life uses insecurity (the stick) to keep your nose to the grindstone, while you “earn time off” (the carrot) to play. When it's considered positive, play is the special genius of Einstein, but also profitable industrial entertainment: a "program" you watch. It's not natural for all creatures, but tainted as waste and parasitism. Human resources are expendable if your workforce is a sweatshop in Asia. Since the US has the weakest labor laws (and the longest work week) of any advanced economy, getting a choice job means survival.
Historically, the poor have been kept living from hand to mouth; now the middle class, we’re told, is also threatened. To keep play under control, business and government fight to limit medical and unemployment insurance, sharpening insecurity. A century ago, when the psychologist G. Stanley Hall and others also worried about overprotected kids, they recommended wilderness and wildness to shake up the tameness. Today that would be unthinkable.
The factories have gone to China, but competition still encourages a factory mentality. “Helicopter” parents are tempted to grind their kids to give them “an edge.” The goal is to develop skills and talent, but in reality the job increasingly chooses the employee, who “slots” herself into a program. In higher ed these days, students are showing signs of panic when they choose a major that promises a job, whether or not it suits them.
Technology and management stress programs, promising affluence as they as automate work, decreasing employment and salaries. In fact, tech is also programming play. Preschoolers may be physically lagging overall, yet show highly developed thumbs from video gaming. Most video games model “play” as a paranoid competition to survive by killing “enemies” on a screen. The games are machines that program players.
And so “entertainment” has limited the idea of play. “Earning time off,” young and old turn to the paranoia of television, which dramatizes what George Gerbner called a “mean world,” exaggerating violence and thrilling to narrow escapes from death. “Play” is multi-million dollar “spectator sport.” It’s run by “helicopter” managers who micro-manage the action and profits to get an edge on rivals.
With this conflicted attitude toward play, parents may lock kids into a lifeless security system thinking they’re giving them more life. Sometimes worry about death is deadly. When the word “re-creation” is corrupted, it loses its “creative” power.
As in law, so in play: the spirit counts as much as the letter.
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Tom Murphy MS OTR/L ATP is a pediatric Occupational Therapist at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, MA. He spent 12 years (1999-2011) screening pre-school children for motor skills as part of a grant program in Holyoke, MA. In 2011, he founded the Bogin Playscape Project (boginplayscapeproject.com) to build and donate indoor playgrounds and equipment to childcare centers in Western Massachusetts. Two playgrounds have been completed, and a third will be finished in Spring 2016. He also works with Arlene Spooner, PT CEIS, a pediatric physical therapist, and gives training workshops on motor development for children infant to age 5. In his words:
“My very first job out of high school was as an assistant teacher in a pre-school in 1973. I somehow have always managed to incorporate work with preschool age children through many career turns; as a furniture designer (building indoor playgrounds) , rehabilitation engineer (working on equipment for disabled children) , and finally landing in my present job as a pediatric Occupational Therapist.”
Other resources:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/1/182
http://www.gesellinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Pretendplay.N…
https://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/school-disc…
http://www.truth-out.org/articles/item/36947-when-play-is-criminalized-…
