Child's Play
Last week I, so fortunately, spent a few days attending the International Play Association's Triennial Conference. Play lovers and advocates from around the world came to Calgary to share ideas, learnings and obviously, to play! There were so many things I learned - lots and lots of research and we all know how much I love research - and as I've been trying to figure out what to share I think it's boiled down to the two biggest themes. 1 - Children Want to Play In every session that I attended, no matter who was presenting or how it was presented, there was one thing that NEVER changed. All children have an innate desire to play. When asked, they ALWAYS say they want to play, they want more time to play, more play - period. 2 - Adults are Ruining Play Not to be a downer but the other reappearing theme was this: we constantly get in the way our children playing. We are busy, we are worried, we don't want people to think we are bad parents - the list goe