The Child in the World: Embodiment, Time, and Language in Early Childhood

5. Playing at the Edge: What We Can Learn from Therapeutic Play

F I V E Playing at the Edge What We Can Learn from Therapeutic Play States parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child, and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts. Article 31, Convention on the Rights of the Child, United Nations The psychology of child’s play, the psychology of the child in general is a psychology of his little room, the garden and the kitchen, it is a psychology of the garret with its trunks, boxes and dark corners, of the cellar with its significant smell and chilliness, of the cupboard without tangible boundaries, of the space under the table, where the legs of the parents and of the guests invited to the family feast have their lively play. Thus, and in no other way, is the psychology of the child a psychology that does not forget the child. J. H. van den Berg, “The Human Body and the Significance of Human Movement” By the end of the twentieth century the connection between early childhood and play seemed well established and generally accepted in the humanities and social sciences: philosophers, poets, educators, and psychologists seemed to agree that early childhood is the “play age,” and that play is the child’s work, as the philosopher Rousseau (1762/ 1979) had stated in the eighteenth century. Politics followed suit: in 1990 the United Nations ratified and legally protected child play in the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. It seems ironic that just as child play has achieved internationally protected status it be109 gins to vanish from American public life. Since 1990 the number of academic books published on play has fallen dramatically. Preschools and kindergartens are trading in their play corners for worksheets and desks, elementary and middle schools reduce leisure and playtime on the playgrounds , parents are too afraid of traffic and abductions to let their children play in neighborhoods, and free indoor play has been taken over by adult-produced television and computer games. Finding time and space for free play, unregulated and unstructured by adults, has become difficult for most children, especially in our educational institutions. Indeed , play seems to have become antithetical to the goals of Western education. In this chapter, I will illustrate the critical role of play in children’s affective and cognitive development through a phenomenological-structural analysis of play. We meet Niki again, the young child who was severely neglected during her infancy and early childhood (see chapter 1) and follow the course of her play therapy. We will witness Niki’s courageous struggle to work through her feelings of abandonment via play therapy, and in so doing, learn much about the vital role of play in children ’s lives. I have chosen the somewhat extreme form of therapeutic play because it brings into focus some of the structural elements of play that are present but concealed in ordinary play situations. THE CUPS OF SAND: FROM AUTISTIC TO SENSORY PLAY Psychotherapists who work with children understand the transformative power of play. Rather than enjoyment and leisure, which are the hallmarks of ordinary play, pain and suffering are the driving forces of therapeutic play. This kind of play has an existential urgency: it provides a lifeline back into a world shared with others. Therapeutic play is play with an edge, stripped of all but its essential features. The following passages by therapist Eliana Gil (cited in James 1994) introduce us to her work with Niki who, as we saw before, suffered from failure to thrive as a result of profound parental neglect. In addition to malnutrition and untreated rashes and infections, Niki, at four years of age, could not walk, could barely talk, and was not toilet trained when she entered the foster care system: “The foster mother reported that Niki was lethargic and passive. She did not cry, even when soiled or hungry . She preferred to stay in one spot, apparently uncomfortable with being out of her crib. She didn’t seem interested in toys and usually clutched her blanket in her hands. Niki flinched when her foster mother 110 CHAPTER FIVE came into the room in the morning” (142). In the therapy room, her therapist found her to be passive and unresponsive for many months, unattached to anyone and uninterested in...