The importance of play in kids’ life
Play is one of the fundamental activities in children’s life, since playing allows them to simulate reality, acquiring important skills for their adult lives. This is what affirms Doctor Peter Grey, an evolutionary psychologist, interested in the role of play in human lives, but mostly in its effects children’s development.
Play stimulates creativity. In fact, children can experiment new ways of thinking and acting and they can make mistakes without being judged. In play, more than in any other aspects of their lives, children are in charge of their own activities. They learn to structure their own behavior, solve their own problems, and get along with peers as equals.
“By definition Play is activity that is self-chosen, self-directed and conducted for no reward outside of itself.”
A child who plays a lot has the chance to be more creative as adult. A 2014 study by the University of Colorado conducted to 6-7-year-old kids whose parents let them play a lot of time, showed how the subject are able to acquire independent skills such as the ability to process their own thoughts without external influences and problem solving skills.
Cautious parents that needs to guide their children into the “right thing” every time, can destroy their kids creativity. By doing so in fact, they are not allowing their kids to grow up independently and able to make their own decisions.
Doctor Peter Gray advices to back off every time their children ask them to solve their problems. Is not an easy thing to do for parents, he said, but it is necessary to do it in order to make creative adults, with high capacity of problem solving, maturity and with great sense of self-worth. All this without giving up the primary role of parents as guidance. It is necessary to warn children of realistic dangers, instead of relying to those messages of “esperts” warning parents to sort of dangers if they don’t follow their kids.
To grow creative, independent children with problem solving skills, parents must back off and let kids play.
Our team is agree with Doctor Gray. Mash&Co in fact is an app that stimulates creativity through the idea of free play. In the gameplay there is no text or voice-over that can “help” the young players. The scope is to introduce the little ones into sharing and mutual aid values through an exploratory game in order to let them help their friends Mash and Periwinkle save the forest from the drought.
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