Why it's time to get down on your knees and play

For most people, play seems such a natural activity for children to engage in that there is no need to think further about it. However, we may not be so convinced about the value of play for parents.

Play isn't just for children, for keeping them quiet and helping them to get on in life, though it does those things as well. We know that for children, the distinction between work and play is false - their play is their work. Yet, because the importance of play for children's learning is now well recognised, play is in danger of being narrowed down to the use of manufactured toys and "educational play".

A broader approach, which sees play as an enjoyable experience for both parents and children, suggests that it can be helpful for all of us. Play can be healing for adults and children.

Here the view is that play is a way of spending time with our child that is enjoyable for both parties, has no outside goals, such as learning pre-reading skills, is something that is not obligatory for either partner but is freely chosen and finally, that involves both partners, child and adult, in an active and pleasurable way.

If we want to matter to our children and be influential in their lives, we have to lay the building blocks of the relationship. Sometimes we are tempted to delegate all of the important activity of play to others - be it the experts as we see them, such as the pre-school teacher or the teacher, or at a later stage the child's friends. If we do so, we not only lose out on one of the great pleasures in life, we also lose out on an opportunity to strengthen our relationship with our child.

Adult intimate relationships usually develop around some kind of activity - it may be shared pleasure in dancing, walking etc. Whatever it may be, the activity provides the vehicle for the flow of feelings between the partners to the interaction.

It can be difficult to maintain shared activities with a growing child as children's ways of playing change and develop. However, it is well worth the effort, at all ages, to seek out an activity that is a mutual pleasure, even if the activity is more pleasurable at first for the child than the adult. It is a way of conveying to our child that he or she matters not just for activities at school, but as a person with interests.

Barriers to playing

There are some barriers to spending time in pleasurable activities with our children, some personal and some societal.

Time: Too often time pressures push the fun and enjoyment out of our relationships with our children. The solution is not to say that mothers should stay at home full-time instead workplaces need to facilitate both parents to spend time with their children.

Poverty: If a parent's life is built around a search for ways of walking the line between money lenders and debt-collectors and keeping the household fed, the energy left over for play can be small.

What many women are learning is that time spent playing with their children can be pleasurable and actually relieve some of their stress and anxiety. Freeing ourselves from the everyday worries by really letting go and entering into playful activity both with and without our children can actually free us to see better solutions and to tackle problems.

Personal barriers: There are many barriers to playing with our children that arise from within ourselves in addition to outside limitations.

The first of these is our own ability to play. Play can provide us with opportunities to re-experience our own childhood in new and positive ways.

If we have had unhappy experiences in our own childhood, getting involved in play can bring back some of the bad feelings we would prefer to keep buried. If this happens, we need to be willing to find the help and support that could enable us to reclaim and live with these feelings, perhaps through counselling or therapy.

In doing so, not only will we be able to play with our child, we may also free ourselves to more enjoy our own lives more fully.

Marian Murphy is director of the master's in social work at UCC and is a member of the panel of assessors of the National Social Work Qualifications Board. She has worked as a social worker in Community Care and with the ISPCC.