Susan Linn, Director of the Campaign for a Commerical-Free Childhood, and Joan Almon from the Alliance for Childhood conducted a workshop on creative play at the CCFC Summit in April.

Linn began the workshop with a simple exercise: she held up three puppets, one at a time, and asked us to write down a) what it was, b) what its name was, and c) something it might say.

The first puppet was really just a white sock over her hand with two eyes attached. The second was similar but also had ears and a mouth. The third was a blue, furry monster we all recognized as Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster.

As you may have guessed, the first puppet elicited a variety of identifications, names, and statements from the participants. The second puppet drew a more limited response. Cookie Monster, of course, was a cookie monster and didn’t say too much beyond “Me want cookie.”

This exercise blew me away in its simplicity and its significance, as does Linn’s new book, The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World.

Linn is a ventriloquist, among other things. She started as a child, performed on the street corners of Boston and eventually moved on to the Smithsonian and even Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.  She eventually used her skills and education to become a puppet therapist at Boston Children’s Hospital.

In addition to being the cofounder and director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Linn is the Associate Director of the Media Center at Judge Baker Children’s Center and Instructor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.

In The Case for Make Believe, Linn does just as she promises: makes a case for childhood play by helping us to understand why it so important for childhood development and making us realize how far away from play we’ve gone:

Play is so fundamental to children’s health and well-being – and so endangered – that the United Nations lists it as a guaranteed right in its Convention of the Rights of the Child. . . . In the United States and other industrialized nations, seduction, not conscription, lures children away from creative play.

Lovable media characters, cutting-edge technology, brightly colored packaging, and well-funded, psychologically savvy marketing strategies combine in coordinated campaigns to capture the hearts, minds and imaginations of children – teaching them to value that which can be bought over their own make believe creations.

Reading the book, I was really struck by the fact that our society does not value creative play. Linn talks about how play has almost been eliminated in schools in favor of government-backed policies that “promote rote learning.”

I asked her, in an email interview, if we should return play to the classroom and how we could do that.

“Given that play is the foundation of learning, critical thinking, and constructive problem solving, it’s essential that we return play to preschool and early elementary school classrooms especially,” Linn said. “On a policy level, we need to repeal No Child Left Behind which places teachers in the bind of having to ‘teach to the test.’ We need to bring back recess and allow children free play time outside and in gym class. We need to bring back art, music, and drama to the classroom, which provide opportunities for creative expression. We also have to educate parents that creative play is all about learning—it’s how children construct knowledge of the world around them.”

As a parent, I know she is right – most of us don’t have degrees in child development nor do we spend hours poring over literature and research that helps us understand what really is best for our kids. Unfortunately, much of the information we get comes from companies that have developed products to “help parents.”

So, for example, in our confusion over screen time for babies, most of us think that a half-hour here or there, while we’re cooking dinner or taking a shower, won’t hurt anything. Certainly that’s what baby-video marketers will tell us. But what about a child’s developmental step of learning to self-sooth? Linn states that babies can’t master self-soothing if there is always some distraction there to pacify them.

But what about those baby music CDs that marketers told us will make our babies smarter? Linn states that there is no research that links listening to classical music to an infant’s intellectual development. That notion has been such a mainstay of our thinking as parents (at least those with kids the same age as mine) that I found it very hard to believe.

In our interview, Linn said, “It came out of a study a few years ago demonstrating that college students who listened to Mozart did better on certain cognitive tests. The press got a hold that the study and it was publicized heavily all over the world, and then the marketing industry saw it as a great way to make money and began packaging music for infants claiming it would make them smarter. Meanwhile, no other researchers have been able to replicate those results.  

“That said,” she continued, “I think it’s important to incorporate music into children’s lives from infancy—not because it will make them smarter but because it will engender a love of, and appreciation for, music that will enrich their lives.  And it doesn’t have to be classical music either—introduce them to jazz, folk, rock, and whatever kind of music you love. Eventually they’ develop their own musical tastes.  Also, tambourines, bells, drums and other easy instruments get them in the habit of making their own music.”

The Case for Make Believe features her work as a play therapist. In detailed stories, she illustrates how she uses puppets to talk to hospitalized children. As the children reveal their problems through play, she is able to guide them to work through these problems while still playing. Linn uses these stories to help us understand the “intricacy and depth of children’s psychological relationship to the play they create and as an argument for ensuring that we provide children with opportunities for make believe.”

Reading about play therapy experiences with sick children was both enlightening and intimidating. As parents we aren’t providing therapy every time we play with our children, but I asked Linn how we can help our kids work out emotions through creative play. 

She said, “Children naturally use creative play to work though feelings and experiences. We can reinforce their natural inclinations by expressing feelings when we play with them.  When a child pretends that one of my puppets is being stalked by an ogre, my puppets routinely say, ‘I’m scared’ in addition to crying. If we verbalize feelings when we play with children we help them learn to identify different emotions and also send them the message that it’s okay to have feelings and to talk about them. 

“And by giving children the time, space, and silence essential to make believe play, we give them an opportunity to generate play about what they’re struggling with—whether it’s a new baby, or starting school, or struggles about bed time.  Children use play to gain a sense of competence in the world and often chose to play about things that feel overwhelming.” 

So there’s no “wrong” way to play with your child?

Linn responded, “Remember that if it stops being fun then it’s no longer play. Also, there’s no one play medium that’s better than another.  Some children love to talk through puppets, dolls, and stuffed animals, others prefer to draw, or to build, or to express themselves through music.”

In a culture where glitz is mistaken for substance and pundits tout the bells and whistles of technology as a panacea for most of life’s ills, children more than ever need the time, space, tools, and silence essential for developing their capacities for curiosity, creativity, self-reflection, and meaningful engagement in the world. Yet in today’s United States, society on all levels conspires to keep children from playing; in a market-driven society, creative play is a bust. It just isn’t lucrative.

Emphasis mine. One of the problems with childhood play today, argues Linn, is that it is scripted: children learn the scripts given to them through cartoons, videos, games, and licensed characters and are unable to imagine stories outside those scenarios. The Cookie-Monster-puppet exercise from Linn’s workshop is one example. For some children, a script may take the form of repetitive, meaningless violence and fighting; for others, it may be playing princess but only using Disney-provided princess names and scenarios.

If, as I do, you believe in the value of traditional fairy tales despite their flaws, then it’s essential to share them thoughtfully with children . . . . When fairy tales become commercial megabrands, their depth and malleability diminish, and so does their value as springboards for creative play. Once fairy tales become visual versions of someone else’s values – viewed over and over and sold to us in combination with tiaras, jewels, ball gowns, and castles and plastered with images of specific princesses with specific physiognomies – they lock children into a set script for playing from which it is very hard to deviate. Immersion in the Disney Princess brand – with its focus on glitter and acquisition – precludes playing out the more psychologically meaningful aspects of the stories that take place before the heroine becomes a princess: themes of loss, sibling rivalry, and parent-child conflicts.

The Case for Make Believe concludes with lots of suggestions for parents and other caregivers to help us incorporate creative play into every day.

A final question for Linn: In the work that I’m doing with Parents for Ethical Marketing, I often find parents who are on the defensive — feeling criticized — about the decisions they’ve made along the way. Linn mentions this too when she writes that she’s not trying to make parents feel guilty.

So how do we break through this barrier so that parents can really hear the message we’re bringing?

Linn answers, “It’s never been harder to be a parent than it is today. Parents are so stressed and there’s this $17 billion dollar industry trying to undermine their best efforts. I think we all have to acknowledge that being a parent is about the most challenging endeavor we can ever undertake, that there’s not a “right” or “wrong” way to do it, and that we all make mistakes along the way.  It’s a marvelous journey, but it’s not an easy one. We don’t have to be perfect.”   

The Case for Make Believe (as well as her 2004 book Consuming Kids, a must-read primer) is a well-written, well-documented, accessible, and convincing argument for changing the way we raise our children — from what commercial culture expects us to do to what is truly best.

The Case for Make Believe is available here. Or, until May 31, you can receive a signed copy by donating $75 to the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.

Photos courtesy Arwen Abendstern, sndrspk, and pingu1963

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19, 2008 at 6:27 am and is filed under CCFC Summit, The Goals, Disney, Books, The Problem. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.