
The Power of Play
The Universal Language of Children
[This article first appeared in the FlyNamibia magazine]
When was the last time you played? Maybe you counted the number of clouds in the sky on your way to work or made up a story for your child at bedtime. Play has been a part of all our daily lives since the moment we were born.
Play is broadly defined as the act of engaging in an activity for enjoyment or recreation. Simply put, any activity without a specific purpose, other than bringing you joy, is play! While regarded widely as recreation, play has profound and lasting effects on brain development – particularly in children.
Early childhood development (ECD) refers to the holistic physical, emotional and mental development of a child during the first few years of life. During the period between the ages of 0 and 6 years, a child’s brain forms over 1 million new neural connections every second.
The brain undergoes massive growth during this time, which means children are able to rapidly learn new information and skills. This is where play comes in – it allows children to interact with different people, concepts and things which lead to them developing new abilities based on these interactions. By regularly engaging in play by themselves and with others, children learn how to collaborate with peers, engage their sense of imagination and creativity, and gain a heightened sense of independence – all of which are essential to their development into strong, healthy and well-rounded adolescents and adults.
It is also believed that children develop specific skills depending on the type of play they are engaging in. For example, unstructured free play, such as when children act out stories or play make-believe, helps children to practise new social skills and to think on their feet. Playing with older, more skilled children helps younger children learn to copy positive behaviours modelled by older peers, while older children assume a leadership role which teaches discipline and responsibility. Team games or activities encourage children to work together, which may lead to them developing higher levels of social awareness and empathy for others.
Notably, children who enjoy playing outdoors and participating in aerobic exercise tend to experience more positive moods and display better levels of concentration at school. Does your child enjoy playing make-believe or copying how older adults perform in the kitchen or an office? If yes, they will likely have higher rates of self-regulation, better language skills and a larger capacity for creativity than children who don’t.
Play is an incredibly important aspect of every child’s life and the right of all children to enjoy, no matter the resources that are available to them. Liezl Möller, a training partner of Development Workshop Namibia (DWN) and founder of Busy Brains, an ECD centre in Windhoek, explains the innovative way their centre repurposed donated household items to encourage children to engage in practical life play: “When children play in a mud kitchen, they are using a variety of senses and skills. They experience dry and wet, warm and cold, crunchy and smooth. That’s why we leave them to add water, leaves, rocks, flowers or whatever they find outside.”


Möller adds, “When they make use of old kitchen tools instead of toys, they further their sensory experience by feeling the difference in weight of heavy pots and pans, their hand grip develops, and they use the correct vocabulary for real-life items. Besides all the sensory, physical and language development at work here, they learn to share, wait, discuss ideas and experiment in a carefree environment.”
It is also important to remember that toys do not have to be expensive or store-bought. At a recent children’s reading event hosted by DWN in Gobabis, a town in eastern Namibia, parents were taught how to make toys using very few household items. When asked if he would continue to make and use the homemade toys with his children, Kufina S. Pontianus, a father who attended the event with his family, had nothing but positive feedback. Pontianus explained, “You can understand and learn more about them [children] through the toys. I’ll always use the toys; there’s no other way to communicate with the kids.”
Though it is an indisputable fact that play is essential to the development of a healthy child, most Namibian children unfortunately do not benefit from the same quality of early childhood development experiences and opportunities to play as those children at Busy Brains. As of 2015, 26% of Namibians were living in multidimensional poverty, or experienced some measure of depravity – be it financial, educational, medical or nutritional. These Namibians often take on multiple jobs and lack the financial capacity, time or knowledge to support their children in playing every day or to send them to high-quality ECD centres (kindergartens). This phenomenon is reflected in a 2015 statistic that revealed 70% of children aged between 3 and 5 years were not regularly attending an early-learning programme. There is also still a belief that childhood education needs to be treated as formal education, and too often playfulness is not incorporated into or emphasised in lesson plans for the early years. The limited and rigid methods in which certain lessons are taught hinders brain development and skill attainment due to children not being able to utilise different techniques to process and make connections between concepts and information.
Because of these challenges it is crucial that, as the most influential role models in a child’s life, parents, caretakers and educarers do their best to support the child to play as much as possible. DWN currently provides technical ECD assistance to over 300 centres across 12 towns nationwide. DWN is committed to advocate for equal educational opportunities for all children and has been working directly with educarers, parents and caretakers through regular training and workshops wherein attendees engage in interactive activities and receive informational resources and materials that help them support their children with playful teaching and parenting practices.
Play is a fundamental component of a child’s holistic development. Through play, children acquire skills that enable them to grow into healthy, fulfilled and productive members of society. It is the right of every child in Namibia – and around the world – to play, and it is the responsibility of every adult in their life to ensure children experience the transformative power of play. Whether it is singing a song with them on their way to school, telling them a story before bedtime, or making homemade toys together, play with your child and encourage them to play every day. And remember, the power of play has no age limit!