Child's Play Isn't Just - "Child's Play"

Doing and learning, learing and doing, trying and achieving, failing and succeeding, practising skills over and over, building one ability on another already mastered - aren't these what much of those unrepeatable years of early childhood are all about?

What is this drive, this compulsion, this inner force, that seems to flow from within a child every waking minute? We call it 'PLAY' - but this apparently innocuous and insignificant word altogether inadequately describes a life force - that when encouraged and provided for, will grow a whole and creative individual.

And yet - so often , this thing called 'play' is trivialised - "It doesn't matter - they're only playing" - downgraded as time-wasting, even de-valued - "stop playing and get on with some real work".

If only we could see it! It is word - the work of childhood, and the most important work a human being ever undertakes. Because if this work we call PLAY is left undone in childhood, for whatever reason, the adult who grows from that child will never be the whole, creative and confident person they could have been. And both they and society will be the poorer.