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