Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills

Thanks to LauraK who posted this on the MBG message board. Here's just a sample from this NPR article, which you can read in its entirety here:

"Instead of spending their time in autonomous shifting make-believe, children were supplied with ever more specific toys for play and predetermined scripts. Essentially, instead of playing pirate with a tree branch they played Star Wars with a toy light saber. Chudacoff calls this the commercialization and co-optation of child's play — a trend which begins to shrink the size of children's imaginative space."

"one reason make-believe is such a powerful tool for building self-discipline is because during make-believe, children engage in what's called private speech: They talk to themselves about what they are going to do and how they are going to do it.
'In fact, if we compare preschoolers' activities and the amount of private speech that occurs across them, we find that this self-regulating language is highest during make-believe play," Berk says. "And this type of self-regulating language… has been shown in many studies to be predictive of executive functions.'
And it's not just children who use private speech to control themselves. If we look at adult use of private speech, Berk says, 'we're often using it to surmount obstacles, to master cognitive and social skills, and to manage our emotions.'
Unfortunately, the more structured the play, the more children's private speech declines."