Rebuilding Rob

Sadly, I do not play enough in my daily life. I know some people consider any recreational activity as “play”. – reading, working out, video games. Unfortunately I don’t always make time even for those kids of things.

Unfortunately as an adult, my idea of play these days consists of working out, or playing the occasional video game but when I truly want to play, it involves my kids. I’ll come back to this.

Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn.

O. Fred Donaldson

I think what this prompt is talking about is playing – in the truest sense. Playing the same way that children do. When children set out to do something recreational, and the end up improvising. For instance, a group of kids may decide to play baseball; only to spontaneously decide mid-game that runes are only safe at first and third bases. From the literary world, I think of the novel A Separate Peace and the game that the kids invent, blitzball.

Playing could even be role playing, like kids who play “house” taking in the roles of various family members. As a young child, my friends and I would play Star Wars at recess. We weren’t reenacting the movies; rather we were playing as characters from the movies and creating new situations.

Improvising, adapting , imagining these are the things that are at the heart of playing. There’s a suspension of disbelief that take solace when people play. Creativity takes flight in this space.

As adults, we need more of this in our lives. Not to be juvenile; but to allow our imaginations to take over; to allow our creative juices to flow freely. Children understand this. Why don’t adults?

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; We grow old because we stop playing.

George Bernard Shaw

I think adults are starting to get it. I think that’s why we’re seeing things like the “google office space”. We’ve heard the stories about the tech giants having space where workers can bounce a ball or throw pencils into the drop-down ceiling tiles. They do this not because they’re lazy millennials; but because they understand that as humans, we have to get our minds out of one space in order to spark creativity.

One of the things I always say about my boys, and even my students for that matter, is that “they keep me young” With kid 2 sometimes we’ll build stuff out of Lego’s. We’re not following the instructions mind you. We’re dumping a bunch of parts on the table and seeing what we can create. Other times we’ll be shooting baskets in the yard and decide that random landmarks will be shooting spots THAT is creativity.

As adults, we can really learn a lot from children.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier related posts

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• Life is What Happens: A Look Back at My Non-Existent 2025 Vision
• The Moment I Walked Inside a Hallmark Movie

The article “Our Favorite Way of Learning” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.