Too Much Structured Play is Ruining Our Children – Let
Them Play
Talk to any parent and they can recall a time when they
bought their child something but the child had more fun playing with the packaging
than the toy. Or, the child could have made up a story regarding a set up of Tupperware,
pots and pans, sand, blocks, you name it.
If there aren’t toys or games around give it time and your child will
think up something to do. It’s their
imagination running wild. Our brains are
very creative and they can’t stay still for long.
Imagination is where dreams are created and realized.
It all begins in the mind. First you have to have the thought to even begin to
figure out how you’re going to make something happen, which brings me to
structured play. Structured play is well
and good to teach our youngsters how to interact fairly with each other, however,
in this effort to effectively socialize our youngsters, their active
imagination gets squelched. There gets to be so many rules and regulation to
follow that the children aren‘t given ample space to develop their imagination.
It sometimes becomes a control issue for the adult population as if they constantly
have to entertain their children. That
is nonsense.
It’s actually in the quiet self play when a child or an
adult for that matter connects with who they really are. They begin to hear
what their guides are telling them. They listen to the inner voice inside that
tells them what advice or direction to take.
It can happen to you to if you listen. However, as an adult you can get so busy
doing this or that you aren’t listening until something happens and you hear
yourself say something like, “I knew I should have (blank) instead of (blank).”
It’s when your thoughts start to wander that you’re starting to connect to your
inner self. Listen up. Sometimes it happens when you’re doing the
most mundane things like cleaning, driving or walking. You’re mind isn’t actively engaged and
therefore it’s free to wander when you’re doing a routine task. This happens quite a lot for some people but
then there are others who really want to connect so they meditate by focusing
on their breathing.
The point is when you set your mind free from active
thought your imagination can really take off. Some of the best ideas come to
you when you stop concentrating on what you want to create. Children do this naturally but as we mature
we tend to forget to just play. Let’s play.
"Imagination
is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently
know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and
create."
~ Albert Einstein
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