Kids redefine what makes play meaningful and enjoyable

Play is important for children’s development – ​​but ‘play’ in research is often defined by adult scientists, not by the children themselves. To understand what children really need, a team of scientists in Denmark asked them, developing a special questionnaire based on children’s own words to rate play experiences. They found that children’s idea of ​​’good’ play is sometimes not what adults consider ‘good’ play, potentially involving competition or mischief – but to have fun, children always need social interaction and opportunities to participate with their peers. Researchers say these results show that children need more agency in how they play.

If you need good play to have a good childhood, we need to know what good play looks like. But the study of play often begins from the adult perspective, leaving aside the children’s perspective. To overcome this, scientists surveyed schoolchildren about the game and used statistical analysis to identify the most frequently encountered topics. While some components of a ‘good game’ appear to depend on individual preferences, others may be universal.

“Perhaps we have taken the first steps to describe the magic and intangible thing we call play in a very new way,” said Dr. Andreas Lieberoth of Aarhus University, lead author of the article. boundaries in psychology. “This can help teachers and caregivers promote a variety of play, even if they may not be ‘correct’, ‘educational’, or even ‘good’ by adult standards.”

Co-author Dr. Hanne Hede Jorgensen of VIA University College said, “Adults should stop explaining to children how they should play, and trust children’s ability to do the work. We do not make room for good or bad play – and we must make room for both, because good play for one child may be bad for another.”

in their own words

The scientists started by interviewing 104 children about the game. Using these interviews, they identified recurring elements that describe what makes a play ‘bad’ or ‘good’, and developed a list of 83 statements from the interviews that represent these recurring elements. They then asked 504 other children to recall good or bad experiences with the game and rate them by asking whether they agreed or disagreed with various statements.

Using principal component analysis, the team identified two sets of important elements in games: seven important factors that generally applied to as many game experiences as possible, and 22 elements that captured a wider variety of experiences. Because a scale based on 22 elements would be too long for practical use in research, they used the first seven factors to create a ‘Play Qualities Inventory’. These were social inclusion, imagination, transcendence, access, wild and exciting play, having something to do, and something scientists called ‘spirit of play’. This last factor explains more variation in good or bad game experiences than any other.

If you’ve ever felt it, you know what it means. You know it when you see it, like love, evil or fun. In children’s words, it’s an experience where you feel like it’s ‘just right’, and you might ‘just laugh’ or ‘get a smile on your face’. When the emotion isn’t there, the game is ‘annoying’, ‘boring’, or perhaps you ‘think the rules should be different’.”

Dr. Andreas Lieberoth, Aarhus University

fun and games

A high level of approachability and sportsmanship is usually present in a good game, but the other five themes may be present in a good game or a bad game. Importantly, good play experiences are not always those that supervising adults might consider good.

“In many cases, there will be no violation of good sport,” Lieberoth said. “But in some cases, what really makes the game fun and special is the ability to go crazy, tease each other, and generally violate society’s norms — or the playing field.”

Scientists also learned that disharmony makes the game worse. Losing social interaction with other children turned good play into bad play.

Lieberoth said, “Some of the factors we discovered revealed anti-play kryptonite, which many of us may recognize from childhood or painfully awkward team-building exercises.” “Absence of alignment is high on my personal list. I’ve seen too many well-intentioned adults try to involve a helpless child in someone else’s game, which basically ruins shared alignment. Sometimes an adult needs to scaffold, initiate, motivate, and support, but sometimes they need to shut up and walk away.”

But scientists say that different children like different things. Good play for one child may be bad play for another, especially in different cultures. Providing a wide range of play opportunities where children can choose to try different sports or activities can maximize inclusion.

“The last thing we want is for people to use this work to create rules for ‘perfect play,'” Lieberoth said. “There is no such thing. I am confident that the same protocol at different times and places will yield different stories, different memories, and different agreements. But the findings appear to be quite robust across multiple children within the dataset, so it may be that some characteristics are actually universal. I would be very excited to see the scales used in different settings.”