Timmy Ryan: Playtime – A Lost Art

There’s a classic song by the late Harry Chapin, which depicts a father and son relationship that flounders somewhat due to pressure of time. 

‘Cats in the Cradle’ tells of a dad who is too busy to play with his kid, who later returns the same treatment, when, as a college goer and then pursuing his own career, he has little or no time to hang out with Pop. Do grab a listen if you haven’t heard the song. It’s a cautionary tale really.

It brings into focus just how easy it is to see so many other things as priorities in our lives and miss how important the simple things are, like playing with the kids or finding time for our own ‘play’ pursuits in adulthood. 

It’s not just knocking a ball around with Junior in the back garden. It’s been proven that it is actually good for your mental health, general well-being and it is good to allow ourselves to have fun and play.

We live in a fast-paced world and our time gets taken up with so many demands. Yet, there has to be more to our reluctance to actually make time for playing as we used to do as children.

It could be that some of us don’t have role models like a parent who played games with us enthusiastically when we were kids. I know my Dad was a busy man. We’d occasionally kick a football around or belt a sliotar about down the lane beside our house. I remember that vividly and it’s a nice memory. 

He’d never bother with board games or quizzes and such but hey, you can’t have everything. 

I definitely think my age group played more on our own back then anyway. 

Parents today do a lot of dropping kids off to stuff but that’s still not actually joining in with them doing anything. And it’s not just about the kids. What about their own interests and passions? 

Sometimes I think people won’t risk doing anything that makes them look silly.

I came across a rather interesting study carried out in North Dakota State College in the USA. They took a couple of hundred students and put them in two rooms. 

One group was given a task to complete and they were told their creative output would then be measured. The other group was given the same job but they were told to pretend they were seven-year-old kids. Apparently, the second lot had 30 % more creative output. Why is this significant? Well, according to Dr John Cohn, who spoke about the importance of play in a Ted Talk I watched, there’s a link to creativity when you’re more playfully engaged in your work. Not just enjoying your job but actually having fun with it.

You don’t have to be an expert to know that adults are seriously in danger of overload, stress and depression. It’s pretty much all around us and it’s not getting better. A release valve is needed badly and whatever else you have going on in your busy life, it seems abundantly clear a lot of us are taking it all too seriously.

Professor Peter Gray of Boston College reckons we are forgetting how vital play is in our kids’ development. According to him we’re now structuring play in an adult fashion in sport and not allowing kids to develop their creative spirit. 

We are telling kids, do it this way, conform to the same training as everyone else. It may be producing better results for the club or team in the short term, but at what cost? 

Good Lord, if some coaches got hold of George Best today, I dread to think what they would try to stop him doing, “for the good of the team”. It is essential that kids are allowed grow and blossom creatively, it’s the same for adults. We should never lose a child-like wonder and enthusiasm for the world around us.

I’ve recently reconnected with a game from my youth, Subbuteo and table football. It’s been brilliant playing again and collecting associated accessories. Plus I’ve met a new circle of like-minded people into the bargain.

The people you know who seem dried up, lacking zest and any desire for life, I’m willing to wager are the ones who’ve given up hobbies and passions they once loved. There was a time we played all kinds of things with friends in the street and in our homes. In my day school concentrated too much on field sports and even that was way too serious generally.

Note to educators, have more FUN! Get your kids to smile and play together and enjoy whatever it is they are learning. 

Stop overloading them with tedious homework and let them have more quality time at home. By all means give them time on the Playstation, but balance it with other games. Adults, get the basketball out, play Tig again or Rounders. Dig out the board games and remember the joy of interaction. It’s not all about medals. Remember once when our sports energy drink was a water tap in the school playground?

I’ll leave you with the amazing insight of a famous Irishman George Bernard Shaw who said: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.”