An Introduction to this course on Play
A few questions before we begin, to get you thinking:
Play is ....
Intrinsic motivation
Play as immersive and delightful
Play as training for the unexpected
Is he playing? Or is he in prison? yes that was me!!
What do we learn from this (if we ignore the white sexist privileged hegemony!)
Truly training for the unexpected
Mammals and humans: Rough and tumble and rough housing as vital for development
These young giraffes are play fighting
Jaak Panksepp and rats
Rough and tumble and rough-housing
More from Panksepp to make the point: How to become the George Clooney of the rat world!
Play in part is learning how to be in the culture we are born into
Cultural differences
Learning to be like the adults in their life
Their own meanings
Mucking about: hooray!
Play is based on safe interaction
Peekaboo .. the ultimate interactive game
Emotional roots of play
See how this child can explore and play, but ONLY when he feels safe
Emotional safeness and attunement is necessary for play
Its all about reading the signals
Reading signs and fitting in is not always easy!!
Its also all about attunement and mentalizing
Play reveals such a lot about a child
Angry boys . How to react?
Just playing can be therapeutic
How to make sense of children's play
Imagination meaning and working through
An example using the story stem protocol
Learn why play is so incredibly important