Adapted from Lives of Museum Junkies
The Happiness Business: Playful Learning is Good
What is the secret of life? This question is an easy one for me to answer: happiness, of course. I am not talking about giddy-happy like you might feel if you won the lottery but rather calm-happy, producing a general sense of well-being. The Greeks described happiness as the joy we feel moving towards our potential. It is a process and not an end in itself.
Museum professionals are in the happiness business. Parents too are in the happiness 2013 article in the Huffington Post, Carolyn Gregoire reported on a seventy-five-year-old Harvard study that explored secrets to a fulfilling life. What researchers discovered was that most people rated love first and happiness a close second to finding fulfillment. Yet experiencing joy requires making connections and finding challenges that provide new perspectives. The process is one of problem solving, a creative activity that produces feelings of well-being. What researchers learned may seem obvious, but it doesn’t make it less true.
Philosophers as ancient as Aristotle, as contemporary as the Dalai Lama, and as scientific as University of California professor, researcher, and author Sonja Lyubomirsk wrote in The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want all agree that happiness and contentment are primary goals to work towards for life to have meaningfu. Learning how to do reach this state of well being should start early with good parenting.
It begins when children are given opportunities to play freely, letting their imaginations flow. When my children were young, they loved to dress up. I salvaged a cardboard washing machine box and filled it with old nightgowns, prom dresses, suits, ties, scarves, swords, hats and crowns, stethoscopes, homemade armor and makeup. As many as eight youngsters would assemble in our garage to don costumes before parading around the neighborhood feeling like royalty, Hollywood sirens, or superheroes. This type activity, with no rules or regulations, provided a pleasurable way to engage in creative storytelling.
Imaginations ran the gamut as they put together dramas and comedies in our garage and playroom. I was often surprised when their acting parroted adult conversations they overheard in our kitchen or when they engaged in behaviors witnessed at home or in school. My children and their friends were practicing the life they thought they would be living as adults. They were analyzing the world as they knew it and presenting it back for their friends and parents to see. It made my husband and I careful about what we said and how we said it.
Negotiating for parts in their dramas was also an intense spectacle to observe. They often played school, assuming the role of teacher, student or lunch supervisor. Their reading and math sessions are often quite difficult. My younger children definitely benefited from the strict instruction they received at the hand of an older brother or sister. If real teachers behaved as they did, I am sure angry parents would be knocking at their doors. However, despite rigid rules, I never heard a complaint coming out of play-school when a child was put in a corner with a dunce hat on his or her head.
My child actors were happy and intense as they practiced being part of adult society. Later in life, when counseling mentally ill clients, I couldn’t help but wonder if they had a chance when younger to be spontaneous and feel wonderment. So many of my clients did not know how to be playful. Those raised in a strict household had a particularly difficult time finding a happiness as an adult. Part of my job as counselor was to loosen them up so they could laugh, shout, and let their imagination fly.
Melinda Wenner wrote for Scientific American that “free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter and less stressed.” She discussed investigations of twenty-six convicted Texas murderers by Stuart Brown at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He found two things that the killers shared in common, they came from abusive families and they never played imaginatively as kids.
Many parents sign their children up to play competitive sports. They also buy them computer games, take them to music lessons, and put them in structured play-groups leaving little time for unsupervised activities. Though a psychologist like Anthony Pellegrini, from the University of Minnesota believes structured game rules are a wholesome source of social learning and group coherence, he also says that, play, without a priori rules, brings about more creative responses. “This freedom challenges the developing brain much more that following predetermined rules.”
The many benefits for free-play start with the development of strong social skills. It teaches proficiencies that come through interacting with peers, practicing fairness, and sharing equipment. Since imaginative play sparks fantasies, it puts children in situations that require them to learn to negotiate and to be persistent without getting frustrated. Games play an important role in language development for to keep them flowing requires the ability to communicate. Even play-fighting can improve problem-solving skills. It is practice for the unexpected. As a stress relieving activity, play is critical for emotional health no matter the age.
Since, playful learning creates happiness, we all benefit when we loosen up and let the good times flow? Free time, play time is good time, important time. Parents shouldn’t worry if every minute of their child’s day isn’t scheduled. This brings me back to the way contemporary science centers and children’s museums operate today.
Museums are entertainment centers first, education centers second. If visitors don’t have a good time they’ll not want to return. In the early days, when hands-on science centers were evolving, we used to study how Disney integrated entertainment with education at Epcot Center. We experimented with ways to involve visitors in problem solving activities and thought about how to make learning joyful. Our centers transformed from behind the glass, push button, hands-off artifact-filled spaces to ones of curiosity and challenge. Our methods worked. It is why millions of people visit each year. I invite you to spend time in a science museum this summer. It is never too late to let your imagination run wild.
Lives of Museum Junkies is available on line and in bookstores in e book and paperback format. To keep track of speaking engagements check the Secrets of a Museum Junkies homepage from time to time.
Check out Over the Peanut Fence, also in paperback and e-book format. A parenting book that tells the story of homeless and runaway youth.
