Play All You Want: It’s Good for You
Say the word “childhood” and visions of another world come rushing to the surface: Peter Pan’s Neverland, Alice’s Wonderland, and the bounty of Narnia. What we most often associate with childhood are long afternoons when little was expected of us and when we were most permitted—even expected—to play. But what we’re learning from leading researchers is that play is what helps us learn; it’s what keeps us young and happy.
Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, says that play is important at every stage of life. “To look deeply at play,” he says, “and to place it in evolutionary, biological, cultural and contemporary context is to partially answer the question, what, really does it mean to be fully human? Or, to state it another way, if play is lost or missing, in a complex changing and demanding world, are there serious negative consequences individually and culturally that affect all who miss out on it?”
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