Rough Thought on Play Wants (Part 1)

(this was written 11/12/13)

 

Recently I’ve had a bad back, it’s nothing new. I get them from time to time, a result of my unnecessary height. But logic tells me that somehow this back ache is also perhaps due to the children who are often attached to me, or jumping on me. I don’t have anything wrong with giving piggybacks or shoulder rides, if that’s what the children want from me then that’s what they’ll get; utilise me, use me, I’m a loose part etc. etc…

However this back ache has triggered a thought, and that thought has triggered a question, and that question has festered in my mind; and now I’m an insomniac as well as having a back ache. Just to clarify it’s not my back that’s keeping me up; it is the thought.

And the thought is this (in its simplest form);

Children do not need piggy backs, they want them. But they need play. Yet a piggy back is their form of play in that moment in time.

The thought then expanded;

Therefore there must be a distinction between what is needed in play and what is wanted.

From that thought of a distinction between what is needed and what is wanted in Play I turned my mind to the concept of Play Needs. I think that to identify a Play Need would be unproductive as a result of the ever-evolving nature of play. That what would be easier would be to just ensure that as many Play Needs could be accessed as possible at any one time i.e. loose parts.

Still with that opinion, but including with it this new thought not of Play Needs, but of Play Wants, I looked again.

A Play Want is thus not essential to the play process, to not facilitate it may end a specific form of play, yet the play itself will still exist. However with this definition, a Play Need that is not facilitated will end the play process; that whatever that need is it is essential to the existence of Play. That is not to say that one eliminates the other but that the two co-exist, that there are both Play Needs and Play Wants.

So I guess what are constantly evolving are the Play Wants and not the Play Needs. I think of it like this, the need to eat, to drink and to sleep do not evolve. We will not suddenly evolve a new way in which to sustain our bodies. But the want to build a fire, the want to have a piggy back or build a den will, can and does evolve.

So the question becomes; what is it about Play that we need? That is under the assumption that everything else is a want and is thus not “essential”.

My initial thoughts about what it is about Play that we need stemmed from reading Marketta Kytta’s (2004); the thoughts; the factors, being Mobility and Affordances.

Yet without Affordances one can still run through the wasteland with their Mobility. And without Mobility one can still access the Affordances near to them. And without both Mobility and Affordances one can still play with those around them. Even then if you have neither Mobility nor Affordances, nor people with which to play then there are still ideas and emotions to play with; albeit it in the most restricted sense.

However then we enter the realm of Play Deprivation, something which this writing is not in the subject to address. However it is worth noting that along the way play stopped. So somewhere within the nooks and crannies of those words is the possibility of identifying a Play Need.

Now swimming blindly in the ocean of thought that is play, it would seem wise to use Affordances and Mobility as an anchor with which to continue our search for a Play Need/s, for the very essence that makes play possible.

In some space between having both Mobility and Affordances and in having nothing and being deprived, there is a point in which play stops. Potentially it is a process that causes it to stop or that in some way it fades away; much in the way the sun sets. However I can’t see a way of identifying a process by which it fades away without before identifying the nucleus on which the process is based.

Perhaps it is a question of freedom. Not referring to the ability to move from one place to another but referring to the way in which other people command us. To be free is to have no master. In theory with freedom comes the ability to do what you want without consequence and to me that sounds like a state in which play would be fruitful. Yet it is merely an ideological thought as are any of us truly free?  

Admittedly this is deep, profound stuff, following the works of Rudolf Steiner and Albert Camus; but worth exploring in our quest for a Play Need.

In everyday life I think of who we are commanded by, who is it in our lives that has influence over us, who’s orders we follow. Parents, managers, police, all agents of socialisation in fact and even friends. But from a child’s position the list must seem endless. From all angles people are telling them what to do, they can say no to friends (some of the time) but on the whole everyone around them is an adult and has some level of control over them. Teachers, parents, neighbours, police, bus drivers, shop staff, etc.

But for arguments sake lets imagine a state in which you are above these agents of control, or better yet, they do not exist. Even then, do we have freedom?

If one has religion then they are a slave to their God; they are not free in that sense; yet they can still play. Just because you worship a deity or deities does not mean that you’re incapable of play; that very thought is preposterous.

However are any of us truly free? Are we not all at the end of the day a slave to Time and as such all condemned to death? The point being that as none of us are truly free, in that we are all commanded in one sense or the other, in its rawest, by time and that our level of freedom is limited always. But that even while having this limited freedom we can still play. And more importantly children, who are commanded by parents, teachers, laws, society, time and a load of other things, can still play.

So it cannot be a question of freedom, as none of us have it in the first place. Not there will we find a Play Need.

But again (Not including the example of Time) the more “Freedom” we have, logically, the more lucid play can be.

So if the trigger that makes Play possible isn’t physical (Affordances and Mobility) or an idea (Freedom), then perhaps it is an emotion? I can think of no other category with which to follow.

Obviously it must be something that is experienced during play, boredom for instance would not be a good place to start? Or would it? I have known cases when children have told me that they are bored, yet they have not left the play setting. As much as my intuition can guide me I would say that they remain because they want to play, and that boredom is thus a state when one is not playing.

So with this identified the opposite of boredom must be a state in which play does occur. At a guess I would say that the opposite of boredom would be excitement.

The key point here being that boredom is a negative emotion and now we have established excitement as the positive alternative. Yet excitement is not our Play Need.

Yet with excitement not being our Play need what is? Indeed in positive emotion logic stands to say play can flourish, so if herein lies the nucleus essential for play to exist, the trigger for its being, the core of such positive emotion must be out Play Need.

And the core of positive emotion is happiness.

Happiness? It sounds so cliché, so obvious. Too obvious in fact, it can’t be right, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense to me. In the depths of depression people are not considered playful.

…

If this is taken as fact, as now after careful thought I do. We can acknowledge play as being positive, which it is. Yes there may be the question of the Dark Side of Play, but I think that to play in happiness is to also play on the brink of happiness, and no doubt one person’s fall from happiness can cause another to rise in the state from happy to happier; however cruel that may sound, truths are truths.

Now if we bring back the idea of Play Wants, those which are none essential to Play and take them into consideration with the idea that the Play Need is happiness we come to an interesting conclusion.

Consider Play Wants, them now referring to all and every type and degree of Play; with the Play Need just being a degree of happiness. So why is it that we facilitate this infinite number of play types for children? If the Play Need is a degree of happiness why do we facilitate such infinite numbers of Play Wants? Why else other than for the fact that they enjoy it, that it results in positive feelings. And with the core of positive feeling and emotion being happiness the Play Wants become more important than first conceived.

They may not be the trigger necessary for plays existence or the seed from which it stems but that they cause positive feeling is a vital point as now a continuum is established:

Happiness results in Play Wants and the indulgence of Play Wants results in happiness which in turn stimulates the drive for more Play Wants and so on and so forth…

So despite there being the distinction between Play Needs and Play Wants it seems they are just as essential as each other to the survival of the continuum. And if my back has to be sacrificed to the survival of that continuum so be it.

In the broadest sense of the term; play is the pursuit of happiness.

The only remaining question I can currently think of is what came first, the chicken or the egg, the Play Want or the Play Need. If this continuum exists then it must have had a beginning. And even if it doesn’t exist I still find it helpful in terms of my own playwork practice. I would think it was the happiness (just a guess of logic) which came first and then began the cycle. If a Play Want is driven by happiness then that is that, but happiness can be caused by more than just the indulgence of Play Wants. But where then did this initial happiness come from?

Well babies always crying once they’re first born so it’s not there. I would think that it was given to us by the previous generation, by our parents. Whether by a funny face, a pat on the back or a warm hug, whatever action that gave us that first good feeling began the cycle of infinite possibility, of the infinite ways to Play. Or perhaps even further back, in the suspended comfort of the womb.

 

 

 

So under that assumption is Play innate?

That’s a big question I didn’t mean to unlock. What I mean is that it is natural to want to feel good but is the urge to play innate? Or is it just the cycle of receiving and seeking positive feeling? A cycle that we begin and follow but an incredibly young age?
I’m not saying it’s not innate, don’t shoot me, it was just a thought I had and found it intriguing.

I’m going to stop there and hope that my insomnia is gone…