Children play to discover themselves and the world and figure out how to engage the realities around them. Their ability to experience healthy play mediated by healthy adults is key to their ability to become healthy adults acting on and in the world.
But too many children today are robbed of this opportunity. Play is replaced by physical and verbal abuse, by serving as child soldiers, by sheer poverty, by war and and religious fundamentalism, by long work hours, by brainwashing, by child marriage and more.
Even in affluent America, simple toys that allow children to imagine and create as individuals are replaced by plastic bling toys that are tied to movies, characters and Happy Meals. Toys become marketing ploys. Play plays second fiddle to competition.
To make sense of the adult world today, one has only to start at the beginning.
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