Birthdays Celebrate More Than the Passage of Time

Birthdays Celebrate More Than the Passage of Time

Along with a car-load of well-wishing family members, we traveled recently to our youngest grandson’s first birthday party. It was a convivial event with a cheerful mix of celebrants. The birthday guy enjoyed a good nap during the first half of the party, while 3 out of 4 of his grandparents, an uncle, great-aunt, cousins, friends of the family with young children, and of course his older brother sampled the pretty, paper-plated buffet.

Birthday boy’s big brother (whose own big day is coming up soon) was involved with the serious business of play. (No days off for 4 year olds!) After greeting the adult guests politely, I eagerly followed the big guy into the playroom. During my stay on the floor there, several of his peers wandered in and out. It struck me that their casual interactions were similar to those of men and boys playing basketball on concrete city courts; the participants joined or departed without even a nod of greeting or farewell.

Fours slip into pretend play without fanfare. No "hello, may I play?", and not a beat skipped; no explanations or apologies for switching the direction or theme. One minute we were in a supermarket and I was getting my pretend change. Then the scene rapidly morphed into a doctor's examining room because a 4-year-old boy named Jack had just found the doctor’s kit. My reflexes were tested before I could even pocket my supermarket change.

My grandson paused to watch, then returned to his carpentry tasks. He had recently requested that his mother help him make business cards for his budding contracting business. "Now that he's turning four," his father said, "he is giving serious thought to his future, wrestling with tough decisions. What will he be: carpenter, landscaper, plumber, or fireman?"

His birthday party will take place at the fire house, so at least for that one day, his path to the future will, I imagine, be clear. Otherwise, it's as variable as the scene shifting in pretend play; and he's comfortable with that. Shades of his oldest cousin, who is now 13 and all about sports, yet just a wink and a nod ago, it seems, was greeting me with, "Hi, Grandma. Let’s be plumbers," then a day later, introducing himself to a girl at the community pool: "Hi, what’s your name?, I’m B., the landscaper!”

How lucky am I? Just when our current fireman/carpenter/landscaper/plumber converts his energy and fantasy life to the "real world" of sports, his now 1-year-old brother will be ready to greet me with doctor kits, tool belts, play money -- all the paraphernalia of the wonderfully rich world of fours immersed in "just pretend."

March 27, 2008

A Small Fire and the "Big Bang"

A Small Fire and the "Big Bang"

Early last Friday evening, we celebrated the start of the weekend, as we often do in winter, by lighting a small fire in our big stone fireplace. The crackles and glow provided cozy background for our evening meal, then public television’s coverage of the exciting presidential election campaign. The rain was coming down hard and was expected to continue for much of the next 24 hours. No matter, we were unaffected, as long as our basement could stay dry. Heavy winds whipping across the bay behind us were unimportant, as long as no power lines went down.

Ordinarily, the fireplace has darkened well before bed-time. We draw the glass curtains, secure in knowing the fire is harmless now. But this time, for some reason, while my better half was already drifting off, I walked by the fireplace to lock the front door and found the blaze somehow rejuvenated. I woke the poor man up, though gently, with the announcement of a blazing fire. “Couldn’t be,” he mumbled, moving to see for himself. “It’s a blazing fire”, he agreed. “That is going to go on for at least an hour!” and back to bed he went.

I stood watch along with Crispy, our little terrier, who, also apparently unconcerned, was snoring softly on the couch. Too tired to read, I flicked on the TV, channel-surfing to my heart’s content until I found “Charlie Rose” on PBS, with a program devoted to some of issues that enliven contemporary physics, of all things. Amazed at myself for sticking with it for as long as the fire flamed, although there would be no reward of academic credit (I would never have taken the risk of studying physics and/or higher mathematics! Girls didn’t do that in my day!), I listened to Rose interviewing some of modern physics’ stars, including Stephen Hawking.

I’ve since forgotten the others’ names, but it doesn’t matter. What matters was my introduction to the astonishing way their minds work, what excites them, draws them on to search for more and more equations to explain the universe. All this talk of the “Big Bang,” Einstein’s incomplete equation, efforts to explain the Cosmos, gravity, supergravity, a picture of a 10 dimensional universe (I could barely fathom 3 dimensions on building plans), cosmology and particle physics, the search for a theory of quantum gravity, the black holes, string theory!

Now in the light of day, these are all just mystifying words, but in the glow of the fire, I knew what they all meant — and experienced a vertigo that made my little life concerns (the grandchildren’s flu, water in the basement, the phone company's broken promises to fix our fax line, what to make for dinner) seem like utterly absurd minutiae.

Yes, in the scope of things, I and mine are much smaller than an atom. To ease the dizziness at the thought of my and my family’s insignificance, I retreated to my own comfort zone — a fascination with individual differences, particularly among the gifted and talented. More about that will follow soon, now that my feet are back on the ground and the insistent fire is out.

March 11, 2008

Almost, But Not Quite "Taking Play Seriously"

Almost, But Not Quite "Taking Play Seriously"

I was delighted to see, a few Sundays ago, that the New York Times Sunday Magazine listed an article about play in its table of contents. It had a great title and distinguished author too: “Taking Play Seriously” by Robin Marantz Henig.

Putting aside the news columns and editorials that typically capture my attention in this exciting election year, I settled in to enjoy a long overdue heyday for play . . . but I was soon disappointed, largely by the tone of Ms. Marantz Henig’s piece. Above all, it conveyed her ambivalence about the actual merits of dramatic play in early childhood. And I had expected an unqualified endorsement from this highly regarded science writer.

Many of us with ties to early childhood development have been up against a thickening brick wall no matter how worthy the evidence that make-believe, fantasy play, complex pretending is a precious activity helping to prepare kids for life and academic learning. Drills and memorization in preschool and kindergarten at the expense of free play don’t bring kids closer to our goals for them, including social/emotional growth, abstract thinking, and literacy. It has been clearly demonstrated that young children’s imaginative play is a bedrock of their later learning and creative thinking.

My disappointment with the Times piece increased as I read on and encountered the author’s sometimes subtle skepticism. As even she points out, a growing body of literature convincingly argues that play contributes to brain development; but then she seems to debunk that same idea. How important can play be, she asks, if under duress, it is abandoned by children? (It has been observed that traumatized kids, including many children of alcoholics, loose the capacity for imaginative play.) Ms. Marantz Henig seems to favor the view of doubters who say play is not the only route to intellectual development; kids can live without it, implying too that there has been an over-idealization of play.

“Not everything about childhood play is sweetness and light, no matter how much we romanticize it,” she argues, adding that it can be “destabilizing” and “scary”. And then she allows a window into some possible origins of her ambivalence.

“I well remember the darker side of play from my own girlhood. Like many other klutzy kids, I hated recess, since it stripped me of the classroom competence that was such good cover for my shyness. Out in the schoolyard, there was no raising your hand with the right answer. I had to wait to be asked to play jump-rope and had to face embarrassment if I missed a skip or — worse, much worse — if nobody ended up asking me.”

It is instinctive to avoid situations that are threatening even for a girl who enjoyed so many intellectual gifts; but had she been able to play out her fears, perhaps she might have overcome some aspects of the shyness and self-doubt that apparently can still dampen her spirits. Watch the way she goes back and forth about the merits of play:

“It’s a pretty idea, the notion that play gives you hope for a better tomorrow, but science demands something a little less squishy. Science demands that if there are important long-term benefits to play, they must be demonstrated. That is why studies of play-deprived rats are so fascinating: they offer objective evidence that in at least some animals, insufficient play can have serious consequences.”

It is difficult to escape a mountain of evidence of the value of play; but it still doesn’t sit well with the author, and I worry that her doubts, expressed however subtly in this piece, might have set us back in our effort to demonstrate the undeniable importance of play for children’s healthy intellectual and social/emotional development. The lost opportunity is unfortunate.

March 4, 2008