Tonight, as I laughed with my two oldest children while playing a friendly game of “Monopoly Deal”, I could feel all the tension, frustration, and stress from the chaotic evening melt away. I smiled at my son and commented on how good it felt to play a game together. He smiled back and agreed. We spent the next 30 minutes engaged in PLAY, and it was so good for us.
What many of us don’t know is that PLAY has an extremely vital and important effect on our mental health and well-being. In fact, Dr. Stuart Brown has discovered, “that the opposite of play is not work—the opposite of play is depression.” Now, PLAY doesn’t have to mean you bring out the board games or jump on the tramp with your children, although both can be found at our house. Dr Brown has compiled 7 properties of PLAY that can help us to fine-tune what PLAY means for us.
- Play is apparently purposeless. (No checking off boxes here, and it doesn’t have to be done perfectly.)
- Play is voluntary. (You CHOOSE to be “in it” …)
- Play has inherent attraction. (Something we WANT to do, that we don’t want to end.)
- Play includes freedom from time. (When we’re doing it, we lose track of time.)
- During PLAY, we experience a Diminished Consciousness of Self. (We lose our sense of inhibition. A.K.A., it’s okay to be silly.)
- PLAY has improvisational potential. (We get to “go with the flow”)
- PLAY produces “Continuation Desire” (We want more and more.)
For some families, PLAY may be on a ski slope, for others, it may be creating creative concoctions in the kitchen. For others, like mine, it may actually be playing a simple card game at the end of the night; something everyone wanted to do, never wanted to end, couldn’t get enough of, and were able to be silly, light-hearted, and had nothing to do with a checklist.
