A Child’s Work Is About Play

When I was in grad school, I took several courses on child therapy. For younger kids, it was all about play. As I began to see children, I discovered that the kids didn’t really understand how to play.

This was in the mid 1990s, and it only got worse. Jonathan Haidt has gotten it correct. By the time the 2010s rolled around, the phone and the iPad were king. Where were children’s minds going?

Freud was right about dreaming being the royal road to our unconscious. It is how we process the stuff of that day, turn it over, and make sense of what might not make sense to us. Child therapists are correct about kids needing to work things out in free play. Play is the language of childhood, and it is understood by engaging in a free flight of thoughts. Kids don’t learn to think by being told what they need to know! Kids learn by doing, and by having parents who can honor the language of childhood: play. We’re coming back to this vital concept in 2026.

This is now happening in the schools, where tech is slowly being reframed and pulled out of spaces so that children learn to have a childhood, create, and do the work of childhood: play.

When I was seeing children in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was stunned by the lack of creative play. This was before the age of the phone. No, you can’t bring your pet rock into the session, but yes, I want to see you imagine, play school, and work out your struggles. And, as children played and allowed me to interact with them, they resolved the tricky issues of life. I’ll say it again: you can’t do it with a phone or tablet, and in 2026 we’re seeing the results. Depression and anxiety are on the rise. Kids aren’t able to cope with the basic things of life.

Playing away from the computer may also be a good prescription for adults. We discover things during our creative times that tend to open us up to new insights. The kids I saw in the 1990s are now adults and are struggling to work it all out—again. They’re turning to new methods. They’re discovering the adult versions of what needed to happen in childhood: prayer, meditation, and play.

Meditation and prayer can cause us to discover ourselves in new ways; play allows for us to create, to imagine, and to discover what is bothering us. Physical play allows us to explore our minds in different ways than engaging with someone else’s idea of our universe.

An example of this is George Lucas. Lucas has a fertile imagination. He imagined a planet with two suns; we saw it in Star Wars on the planet of Tatooine. Now, we know it exists in space. Imagination comes from developing our play skills. Play enables us to dream and to learn about ourselves in different ways than books allow us to do.

I’m an avid reader. I finish a book and face serious story withdrawal. While books allow my mind to create good things, play allows us to make it come to life. Adult coloring books are fun.

Play allows a child to explore building foundations of life, fixing the problem when the “stuck” moment arises. Play builds confidence that allows a child to see if they can fix something. Physical play allows for setting rules on our own terms, and we learn that no, we can’t defy the laws of nature—but maybe we can explore new ways of engaging with them.

Play is the basis of imagination and of thinking outside the box. Without play, would we have gone to the moon? Would we have all the things we have today if, throughout history, kids playing with other kids had never asked why something couldn’t be done, and then gone and done it?

Play challenges the child and the adult to challenge the norms and go outside of the box. Why not? For those who can color outside of the lines, it is an essential part of becoming a creative adult, and for those who need more of a structured existence, it can serve to teach us to understand our limitations and accept those that want to fly.

Play teaches children to make fair rules and to work things out for themselves.

Play is about finding solutions that are creative and respectful. It is about creating memories and stories that support growth. Play in the simpler days was about staying out until the streetlights came on and being with the kids in the neighborhood. It was about bonding and exploration. How do we get back to that and give kids a chance to explore?

A line in a piece of music from days gone by—“Bookends” by Simon and Garfunkel—keeps returning to my mind. While we must move forward, can we have this thought return for our children?

Time it was and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, A time of confidences

Maybe the welder and the scientist will join forces as children to pursue new memories. Maybe parents will learn that free, unstructured play is a great thing, and it keeps the mind young. Maybe in our brave new frontier, the geeky kid and the builder will learn to join creatively to spark imaginations. Where could play take us? To Saturn and beyond?