6v87YgFhU
6v87YgFhU
6v87YgFhU
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Brett and Kate McKay<br />
What is Play?<br />
On the surface, the question of what constitutes play is a simple one. But as<br />
adults we lose our sense and feel for play, so it may be beneficial to explain<br />
the nature of play a bit.<br />
Play is an activity that is done for its own purpose, exclusively for the<br />
pleasure of the experience. According to Dr. Brown, if an activity’s “purpose<br />
is more important than the act of doing it, it’s probably not play.” Or to<br />
put it another way, “Most essential, the activity should not have an obvious<br />
function in the context in which it is observed—meaning that it has, essentially,<br />
no clear goal.”<br />
While we most often think of play in terms of things like tag and foursquare,<br />
there are actually 7 different types of play:<br />
1. Attunement. Attunement occurs when individuals mutually create,<br />
match, and share their affective states. The best example of this is<br />
when a mother or father gazes at their baby, and the baby gazes back.<br />
The baby smiles, and the parent coos and smiles back. The right brains<br />
of both parent and child are attuned. Another example of this is being<br />
a spectator at a sporting event; the fans are attuned to one another<br />
and are united by a sense of common emotion.<br />
2. Body Play and Movement. This is the kind of play we probably most<br />
often think of when we think of play, not only as children but as<br />
adults. Whenever we jump on or over stuff, play football, dance, run,<br />
and so on, we receive the pure pleasure of feeling our bodies move and<br />
work. Dr. Brown defines Body Play as “the spontaneous desire to get<br />
ourselves out of gravity.”<br />
3. Object Play. Object plays occurs when you’re having fun doing something,<br />
with, well, an object. Like a boy playing with action figures or<br />
pretending that a stick is a sword. Or a man tinkering with an engine<br />
or playing catch or golf (perhaps those latter two are especially pleasurable<br />
because they combine object play and body play).<br />
155