Kindergarten: Where Is The Play?
“It’s not irresponsible to infuse play into the lives of our families. It’s just the opposite; it’s the training ground for responsible adulthood….. Play gives you the ability to be more flexible and adaptable and resilient, all of which enables you to handle an unexpected world better.”
This sounds like common sense, right? These quotes are taken from a U.S. News and World Report interview with Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul
Kindergarten
Jean and Lisa
by Jean Kunhardt and Lisa Spiegel of Soho Parenting
kin-der-gar-ten (noun): german – kinder children + garten garden, a school or class for children ages four to six. Modern meaning: academic pressure cooker
Peggy Orenstein’s piece in the May 2, 2009 issue of The New York Times Magazine, “Kindergarten Cram”, is perfect. It shows how the modern kindergarten class has all but eradicated play from its curriculum. Play is children’s language, play is children’s work. It provides the canvas for imagination, for role playing and making sense of the world they see around them. Play is the natural arena for learning social skills like compromise and leadership, and is an outlet for children to express their inner worlds: their hopes, worries, struggles and resolutions.
The change in kindergarten from a safe and playful introduction to elementary school to an academic pressure cooker typifies the dangerous trend toward the adultification of children. Orenstein cites the recent study by the Alliance for Childhood that confirms that all the recent focus on academic testing of five year olds “neither predicts nor improves children’s educational outcomes”. Research based evidence about learning, the rise in childhood anxiety and depression, and common sense tell us that this is the wrong way to go. We need to buck the system and protect our children.
Jean Kunhardt, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, has graduate degrees in Early Childhood and Special Education from Bank Street College. In addition to leading parenting groups, she specializes in children’s sleep as well as working with couples and adults using a mind-body approach to psychotherapy. She and her sister, Sandra K. Baslie, are the granddaughters of Dorothy Kunhardt, creator of the beloved children’s book, Pat the Bunny. She is the proud mother of high school and college-aged children.
Lisa Spiegel has a Master’s in degree in developmental psychology from Columbia University and is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor. From her two decades of work with adults and children, she has developed an approach that draws on an eclectic range of disciplines, including psychotherapy, hypnosis, meditation, yoga, and EMDR. She also specializes in children’s sleep issues, as well as marriage counseling. She enjoys spending time with her high school and college age daughters.
For more than two decades Soho Parenting has offered realistic, insightful and practical guidance to strengthen parents and help create close and communicative families.
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- Is Child-Centered Parenting Over? (June 8th, 2009)
- The Case Against Dr. Sears (April 13th, 2009)
- Do You Have A Parenting Blind Spot? (March 12th, 2009)
- Problems in Nursing (January 19th, 2009)
