by author Gail Johnson
From “Alive” Magazine

On a rare morning when she had time for a break, Jenny took a big sip of her coffee and sighed. The expensive Barbie doll she had bought for her daughter Emma had been sitting unused in the closet ever since she unwrapped it.

“Emma really wanted that doll,” Jenny complained, “but she’s only played with it half a dozen times.”

Jenny’s sister delicately replied, “When has she had the time? You have almost every moment of her life scheduled for her.” Jenny paused. It was true. She had enrolled her young daughter in baseball, basketball, an after-school club, and ballet lessons.

Best of Intentions

Like so many parents, Jenny wanted her daughter to be well-rounded, to get a feel for the arts and for sports, to have as many diverse experiences as possible. She wanted Emma to have all the opportunities that she missed out on herself as a child. Besides, she thought, it was better for Emma to be out and about than to be tempted to sit in front of the TV.

But Jenny also didn’t realize that filling in every available block of Emma’s time could be doing more harm than good. In her quest to provide Emma with the perfect childhood, Jenny was glossing over one of its most basic and crucial facets: play.

The world has changed dramatically since the good old days, when kids spent more time in playgrounds than huddled up indoors with video games. Yet while the pace of kids’ lives has quickened to keep up with adult-driven, modern-day demands, more and more people–parents and professionals alike–are worried that free, unstructured play is being neglected, to our children’s detriment.

A Universal Right

Gillian McNamee, director of teacher education at Chicago’s Erikson Institute, a graduate school in child development, describes playing as one of the four pillars of a child’s health, alongside eating, sleeping, and toileting. The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights has declared play to be a right of every child. Stuart Brown, a former psychiatrist who founded the California-based National Institute for Play, which aims to bring the knowledge and benefits of play into public life, says that when it comes to learning and memory, play is as fundamental as sleep and dreams.

To put things in perspective, North Americans are blessed to be even contemplating the place of fun and games in society. So many other nations offer proof that it’s not a hurried lifestyle that gets in the way of play but far more sinister factors, such as war, violence, child labour, prostitution, and poverty.

But back on home turf, kids in Canada and the United States are often not getting the full benefits of free play, because it’s frequently considered not as important–or at least not as vital–as more worthy pursuits, such as academics. With North American children scoring lower grades in subjects such as science than pupils in other countries, many schools have shortened free-play periods or recess to make more time for reading and math. And with fierce competition facing hopeful university students, many parents feel that their young kids should be picking up pencils instead of sticks, building their resumés instead of tree forts.

Importance of Play

The fact that play is so often brushed aside is ironic given that such authoritative bodies as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recognize its importance. “Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth,” the organization states in a 2007 clinical report called “The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds.”

The AAP explains that free play enables kids to learn to work in groups, resolve conflicts, use their creativity, become leaders, and create a world they can master, conquering their fears while practising adult roles. Through play, less verbal kids have the opportunity to express themselves in alternative ways. Play also boosts kids’ physical activity levels, an urgent need given today’s staggering rates of childhood obesity. Read alive’s interview with Silken Laumann on page 106 to discover how her Active Kids Movement is combatting this problem.

Current research into play is zeroing in on its role in neurological growth and development. A study by neuroscientist Sergio Pellis found a link between play deprivation and neurological weaknesses. Rats raised in a play-deprived environment had a more immature pattern of neuronal connections in the medial prefrontal cortex than rodents that were able to frolic.

Scientific findings aside, the AAP makes one straightforward point: “Perhaps above all, play is a simple joy that is a cherished part of childhood.”

Sensory Overload

So why do so many parents feel the need to fill their kids’ calendars? One explanation is the pressure they face to expose their children to multiple activities. Flip through any parenting magazine, and there are ads for classes in swimming, tumbling, dancing, gymnastics, music, and painting, many geared to babies as young as six months.

Then there are educational toys, DVDs, and computer games that promise to tap into certain parts of kids’ brains, ensuring optimal development. With so many “intelligent” products out there, the message to parents is that they had better get their kids stimulated early on if their children are going to develop unique skills, talents, and interests. First-time parents are especially prone to comparing their progeny’s progress to that of others and tend to worry their kids aren’t picking things up as quickly as they should.

The AAP describes the pressure moms and dads face: “It is left to parents to judge appropriate levels of involvement, but many parents seem to feel as though they are running on a treadmill to keep up yet dare not slow their pace for fear their children will fall behind.”

A Healthy Balance

Clearly, activities such as swimming and painting have tremendous value; they are fun and beneficial to kids. No one’s saying there isn’t a place for structured classes and events. Many children thrive with one or more regular commitments. But others react to a busy schedule with anxiety and stress. Even those who enjoy having a lot on the go need time for free play, time to fire up their imaginations instead of their computers.

Jackie Bernard chose downtime over a busy time for her daughter Antonia, who’s now 11. When she was a toddler, Antonia started out taking swimming and gymnastics then moved on to team sports.

“We enrolled her in soccer when she was four,” Bernard says in a phone interview from her Calgary home. “She hated it. It was at 6:15 pm twice a week. It was a huge rush. Nobody ate dinner. She was too young to know there was a game going on. It definitely left an impression. To this day she has no interest in soccer.”

Bernard says that after that experience, she made sure that she didn’t schedule things that caused more stress than pleasure for the whole family. She went on to enroll Antonia in various activities over the years, but never more than one at a time.

“I talk to plenty of parents who are doing lots of running around; they’re exhausted,” she says. “We know parents who are run ragged. Where’s the balance? What value are you adding to your kid’s life, and to your own life?”

Freedom Versus Structure

Linda Rose-Krasnor, a psychology professor at Brock University who specializes in child and youth development, says that one of the challenges of modern-day parenting is determining how much free versus structured play a child should have. “Parents need to watch their children, know their children, and recognize when their children are stressed,” Rose-Krasnor told alive in a phone interview. “For some, one activity a week is more than they can handle; others are comfortable with a couple. You also need to look at the quality of the activity. Some parents just drop their kids off and don’t really know what the experience is like. Maybe the activity doesn’t suit the child’s temperament or personality.”

Time to Bond

Another benefit of play is the bonding that can ensue when parents join their kids. Adults get to see the world from their children’s perspective while conveying that they’re paying attention to them.

“It’s a wonderful, valuable, positive time for parents and their kids,” Rose-Krasnor says.

In a world desperate for more time, playtime’s clearly not a waste of time.

Gail Johnson is an award-winning Vancouver writer.

Source: alive #311, September 2008

From the NY Times:
(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/health/27plac.html?ref=science)

By CHRISTIE ASCHWANDEN
Published: May 27, 2008

Jennifer Buettner was taking care of her young niece when the idea struck her. The child had a nagging case of hypochondria, and Ms. Buettner’s mother-in-law, a nurse, instructed her to give the girl a Motrin tablet.

“She told me it was the most benign thing I could give,” Ms. Buettner said. “I thought, why give her any drug? Why not give her a placebo?”

Studies have repeatedly shown that placebos can produce improvements for many problems like depression, pain and high blood pressure, and Ms. Buettner reasoned that she could harness the placebo effect to help her niece. She sent her husband to the drugstore to buy placebo pills. When he came back empty handed, she said, “It was one of those ‘aha!’ moments when everything just clicks.”

Ms. Buettner, 40, who lives in Severna Park, Md., with her husband, 7-month-old son and 22-month-old twins, envisioned a children’s placebo tablet that would empower parents to do something tangible for minor ills and reduce the unnecessary use of antibiotics and other medicines.

With the help of her husband, Dennis, she founded a placebo company, and, without a hint of irony, named it Efficacy Brands. Its chewable, cherry-flavored dextrose tablets, Obecalp, for placebo spelled backward, goes on sale on June 1 at the Efficacy Brands Web site. Bottles of 50 tablets will sell for $5.95. The Buettners have plans for a liquid version, too.

Because they contain no active drug, the pills will not be sold as a drug under Food and Drug Administration rules. They will be marketed as dietary supplements, meaning they can be sold at groceries, drugstores and discount stores without a prescription.

“This is designed to have the texture and taste of actual medicine so it will trick kids into thinking that they’re taking something,” Ms. Buettner said. “Then their brain takes over, and they say, ‘Oh, I feel better.’ ”

But some experts question the premise behind the tablets. “Placebos are unpredictable,” said Dr. Howard Brody, a medical ethicist and family physician at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “Each and every time you give a placebo you see a dramatic response among some people and no response in others.”

He added that there was no way to predict who would respond.

“The idea that we can use a placebo as a general treatment method,” Dr. Brody said, “strikes me as inappropriate.”

Ms. Buettner does not spell out the conditions that her pills could treat. As a parent, she said, “you’ll know when Obecalp is necessary.”

Franklin G. Miller, a bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health, is skeptical. “As a parent of three now grown children,” he said, “I can’t think of a single instance where I’d want to give a placebo.”

Much of the power of the placebo effect seems to lie in the belief that it will work, and some experts question whether this expectation can be sustained if the person giving it knows it is a sham.

Most clinical trials that have shown benefits from placebos are double blinded. Neither the recipient nor the giver knows that the pills are fake.

“For this to work really well as placebo, you cannot let the parents know that it’s a sugar pill,” Dr. Brody said. “You have to lie to the parents, too, if you expect them to fool their kids.”

At least one study has shown that placebos can be effective even when the patients know that they are inert. In a study in 2007, 70 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were asked to reduce their medications gradually by replacing some of their drugs with placebo pills. The children and their parents were explicitly told that these “dose extender” pills contained no drug.

After three months, 80 percent of the children reported that the placebo had helped them. Although that study used a placebo in a different context from Obecalp, it did suggest that deception might not be necessary for a placebo to work, said the senior author, Gail Geller, a bioethicist at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins.

Even if Obecalp proved helpful, some doctors worry that giving children “medicine” for every ache and pain teaches that every ailment has a cure in a bottle.

“Kids could grow up thinking that the only way to get better is by taking a pill,” Dr. Brody said. If they do that, he added, they will not learn that a minor complaint like a scraped knee or a cold can improve on its own.

Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist who studies placebos at the Stanford School of Medicine, said conditioning children to reach for relief in a pill could also make them easy targets for quacks and pharmaceutical pitches later. “They used to sell candied cigarettes to kids to get them used to the idea of playing with cigarettes,” he said.

Ms. Buettner acknowledged that “we expect controversy with this,” but she added, “We are not promoting drug use.”

Despite his misgivings, Dr. Brody predicted that Obecalp would entice many parents. “Anybody who has ever been up in the middle of the night with a crying child would be tempted to try something like this,” he said. “You’re so desperate for anything that could quiet down your poor, miserable kid.”

Doctors themselves have been known to dole out placebos to overwhelmed parents, said Dr. Brian Olshansky, a physician at the University of Iowa Hospitals. A screaming child with an earache may leave the emergency room with a prescription for antibiotics, even though the drug will not speed recovery and could potentially cause harm.

Ms. Buettner said her pill could satisfy that need while reducing potential harms from unnecessary medications. “The overprescription of drugs is a serious problem, and I think there needs to be an alternative,” she said.

Some experts question whether an alternative should involve deception. “I don’t like the idea of parents lying to their kids,” said Dr. Steven Joffe, a pediatrician and bioethicist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “It makes me squeamish.”

Dr. Geller, the bioethicist, agrees that parents should not deceive their children. But she added that a parent who truly believed in the power of the placebo was not really being deceptive. “In principle,” she said, “I don’t have a problem with the thoughtful use of placebo. The starting premise and your own belief about what you’re doing matters a lot.”

Dr. Brody said parents did not need a pill to induce the placebo effect. Mothers have long promised to “kiss it and make it better” and it is that type of placebo children really yearn for, he said.

“Does a sick child really want X-rays or M.R.I.’s or the latest antibiotic?” he asked. “No. All the sick child wants is comforting.”

The world is full of women
who’d tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they’d say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I’ve a choice
of how, and I’ll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it’s all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything’s for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can’t. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape’s been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there’s only a bleak exhaustion.
Speaking of which, it’s the smiling
tires me out the most.
This, and the pretence
that I can’t hear them.
And I can’t, because I’m after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slab of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don’t let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I’ll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
That’s what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body.
They’d like to see through me,
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look–my feet don’t hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I’m rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I’m not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you’ll burn.

~Margaret Atwood

There is nothing to be afraid of,
it is only the wind
changing to the east, it is only
your father the thunder
your mother the rain

In this country of water
with its beige moon damp as a mushroom,
its drowned stumps and long birds
that swim, where the moss grows
on all sides of the trees
and your shadow is not your shadow
but your reflection,

your true parents disappear
when the curtain covers your door.
We are the others,
the ones from under the lake
who stand silently beside your bed
with our heads of darkness.
We have come to cover you
with red wool,
with our tears and distant whipers.

You rock in the rain’s arms
the chilly ark of your sleep,
while we wait, your night
father and mother
with our cold hands and dead flashlight,
knowing we are only
the wavering shadows thrown
by one candle, in this echo
you will hear twenty years later.

~ Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario on November 18, 1939 and is a Canadian writer, poet, novelist, literary critic, feminist & activist. Read more on Margaret & her works here:

Margaret Atwood Information Site