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Seems like the most obvious answer is that the child is practicing/training for future real world situations they will encounter. In the days before TV etc, wh
by robbrown451 5y ago
Seems like the most obvious answer is that the child is practicing/training for future real world situations they will encounter.
In the days before TV etc, what was the alternative? Sitting there with their minds blank? It seems obvious that pretend play helps them develop their minds and capabilities.
- pletnes 5y agoListening to pretend play chatter (as a parent), I find that topics in the play world often reflect recent real world events. I always figured that children must be reprocessing and reinterpreting their experiences for learning and understanding.
- robbrown451 5y agoMy daughter is seven and she is a hard core pretend-player. Hers rarely have much to do with real world events (about 50% of the time she is pretending to be an animal, these days mostly tigers and cheetahs and such but often unicorns etc), but they do get pretty elaborate. I always thought of dreams as being a lot of reprocessing and reinterpreting. Either way, watching kids do this (which is fascinating and I will miss it when she grows out of it) makes me wonder why anyone would question the value of it. Just like physical play (running jumping climbing throwing etc) will prepare you for when you need it, such as when you need to hunt for food or avoid being hunted.
- a9h74j 5y ago> why anyone would question the value of it. I once heard an account, the gist of which was, the man who first wrote the [authoritative] book on play behavior in different animals was unable to get tenure. This was in the context of noting that play in general had been undervalued as a subject.
- mycall 5y agoI think it is less divisive than that. Children are just learning how to externalize their imagination into real "what if this happens" scenarios. There is only so many iterations of that until puberty throws another big variable into the mix.
- robbrown451 5y agoNot sure what you mean by "divisive." I think "externalize their imaginations into real what if this happens scenarios" is pretty much what I was saying, although maybe I am tying it a bit more to why it is useful: i.e. practicing for real things that could happen, so they will be able to handle those situations better than if they had never considered such possibilities previously.
- rcurry 5y agoMy parents never let us have a television except for around Christmas. My dad would buy a cheap TV set and we’d watch holiday movies but after Christmas it went in the trash. We amused ourselves by playing Star Wars in the yard with hockey sticks for light sabers. I’ve fought Darth Vader (my brother) more times than I care to remember and sure got a lot of bruises in the process.
- MichaelMoser123 5y agofascinating; do you have a family of your own? Did you try to emulate this approach? If yes then what were your results?
- MagicWishMonkey 5y agoYour dad would spend hundreds of dollars on a TV set every year and then throw it in the trash after a couple of weeks??? That sounds insane.
- Talanes 5y agoWhen did a "cheap TV" cost hundreds of dollars? Seems more likely it was something closer to an 80 dollar thrift store TV that returned to the thrift store in January.
- rcurry 5y agoYeah he was a scientist and a total madman. He thought TV was unhealthy and made us read books instead. I ended up working at an investment bank. He did teach me to how to brew beer though, so his Phd wasn’t a total loss for us kids.