What Your Imaginary Friend Says About You
Check out the word vomit that inspired this blog post here.
When a toddler hands you a sticky Elmo phone with three buttons and a Cheerio stuck to it, what do you do? Well, you answer the phone don't ya? It's their imaginary friend, you can't just ignore that. When you pick up that phone and have that most one-sided of conversations, you are answering the call to creative play.
What is Creative Play?
The Little Gym defines creative play as a way to promote social and emotional development by integrating feelings with tasks. They explain that the "ideas for creative and imaginative play are available all around us. Often we overlook the simple things, that to a child aren’t as simple. How often do you see a small child staring at a leaf and turning it over to stare at the details." In high school, I'd sit on my grandparent's front porch and watch my sisters play in the grass. They would make up endless games and they would run up to me and ask me to play. I never felt compelled to join because my thoughts were on college and SAT test scores. I didn't have time for childish games, even though I was still a child myself. In my head, I was basically an adult. These days, I wish I had played with them more.
Adulting and Creative Play
According to how to adult, "creating a work of visual art or a musical composition could help relieve stress by establishing an emotional outlet. Creative play with other children encourages the development of social skills by urging children to take their peers’ ideas and feelings into account." Why is this limited to only children? If we take out the word children and replace it with people it would read something like:
Creative play with others encourages the development of social skills by urging people to take their peer's feelings into account.
By changing one word, you strip away the implication that this is only meant for messy faced toddlers on the playground. It's meant for everyone. Somewhere along the way, we lose the sense that it is okay to play. We walk into middle school, get caught up in the wave of puberty and adolescent angst, and walk out thinking we're too good for toys and playing pretend. This happened to me in my own life as I faced the dangers of the seventh grade and spent a few weeks with my twin cousins. Now a ten year age gap is nothing to sneeze at. When you're thirteen, the last thing you want to be doing is coloring a unicorn with half of a crayon. That first week I would find myself stuttering at fake tea parties and hiding in the bathroom because I didn't want to have another dance party. I relished going to the mall with my grandma or going to the store with my aunt. I was obviously closer to an adult than to toddlers; I was in middle school after all.
As the weeks went on, I felt myself subconsciously shedding all the "middle school airs" that I had acquired and just found a reason to play. By that last week, I had crazy hairstyles and was doing flips on the jungle gym. And all the while I was engaged in constant play. At night, I used to find this spark of inspiration to write fanfiction. It didn't matter if I was typing on a computer or scribbling by moonlight, the endless flow of stories and characters came to me without pause. The constant days full of using my imagination to entertain had given me permission to play in my work.
The Point of Play
A middle schooler doesn't have the same gravity of life that adults do. They don't pay bills or build careers and having kids is the farthest thing from their minds. But middle schoolers are the perfect examples of what society is to become. Some of us turn off the play and never return until we find ourselves among a niece or have a kid of our own. Our imagination is the key to unlocking the endless possibilities in our lives. We let our kids run around like monkeys on the playground and allow them to have that space of play in order to grow, yet we stunt that same opportunity for ourselves because "we've already lived it" or "that's not what an adult should do". We may not hang upside down on the monkey bars and chat it up with our friends like in the first grade, but when was the last time you made something out of clay or even got a little crazy with the finger paint? These tiny acts of play allow our minds to switch out of our everyday habits and just bask in the joy of having fun. No goals. No roadmaps. No punch clock. So the next time you find yourself stuck on ideas for a story or a big project or even a difficult decision, pick up your imaginary flip phone and call your imaginary best friend for advice. I'm sure you have a lot to catch up on.
An Idea for Creative Play
Our weekly suggestion for creative play comes from our friends at Crayola! They have supplied the world with their crayons and their website has free coloring pages to go along with it! So break out the art supplies and color to your heart's content. Maybe even get crazy with the finger paint! Until next week!
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