October 2, 2015 - 16:03
Sasha Moiseyev-Foster
Changing Our Story: Shifting Identities, Changing Environments
Professor J. Cohen
October 2, 2015
Laugh Until You Cry: The Use of Play as Stress Management in Children
Of the many ways that play is used by children, perhaps the most crucial is its use as an escape from real world problems and a method of processing emotions. Play provides children with a distraction from their worries, while also allowing them to spin out scenarios in which they are in charge, and safe, and in a position of power. This distance allows them to reclaim agency from that which frightens them. Both Molly Knefel’s article “Kid Stuff” and Butterfly’s posting on two scenes of play from their childhood illustrate how children use play to process negative emotions and traumatic events, although from two different perspectives.
Butterfly’s post emphasized two different aspects of play. In their article, they describe two distinct instances of play from their childhood; one in a fairly dangerous neighborhood in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and another from Lynn, MA. In Santo Domingo, a shooting interrupts a game they are playing with friends, and they retreat to their grandmother’s house for safety. In the second anecdote, Butterfly talks about rushing through their homework after school so she would have time to play with her neighbor. Play is the bridge that connects these two seemingly opposite worlds, and despite the differences between them, Butterfly asserts that they never felt a difference between the play in each place. The difference, however, lies in Butterfly’s reactions. In the midst of a shooting on their block, Butterfly begins to daydream about the game she was engaged in, and fantasizes about potentially winning after the violence dies down and the game resumes. In this way, not only does Butterfly use the act of play (fantasizing) but the potential for play (the subject of their fantasy) to process the traumatic event of a shooting. In her second hometown, Butterfly has no traumatic events occurring within her life, so play serves the primary purpose of recreation.
In her article “Kid Stuff,” Molly Knefel describes the lives of her students in a way that parallels that of Butterfly’s younger self. Both the inner-city middle-school children and Butterfly worry about violence in their communities, and often at home as well. However, Knefel’s children have other worries in addition to this fundamental lack of physical safety: they, unlike Butterfly, are also old enough to worry about sex and drugs. Accordingly, their reactive play is far more intense than Butterfly’s. Instead of daydreaming about future scenarios, they play games centered on the now, and which harness the powerful psychological tool of laughter. They play the “laughing game,” a game in which the goal is to make everyone laugh as hard as possible. Laughing has long been proven to aid in the treatment of anxiety and depression, and by creating a game focused on laughter, these children have found a way to not only distract themselves from their worries, but also provide them with the mental tools needed to handle long-term distress. In this way, they have inadvertently reveal not only the depth of their own concerns, but the resilience that playing endows them with.
Both Knefel’s article and Butterfly’s post provide examples of the power play can have as a method of stress reduction, and evidence that play is, most likely, the source of children’s renowned resilience in the face of trauma. No matter where they are, what their advantages or disadvantages, or the weight of their concerns, children’s instinct to play is so powerful that it can overcome even the most stressful of situations. That instinct is a crucial blessing in order for children to develop healthily, as the children in Knefel’s article and Butterfly’s own younger self demonstrate. When life is painful, start playing. When you worry about gangs, drugs, sex, and racism, laugh with your friends until you cry. When bullets start flying, hide and think about your chances of winning when you resume the game. Play gives children ways of reclaiming their agency in stressful events, similarly to the way that adults watch satirical news programs to laugh about horrifying world events they have little power to change. By providing an outlet for negative emotions and method of processing traumatizing events, play allows children to retain their mental health in environments hostile to their growth.
Play is a universal concept for children, no matter where they spend their childhoods. In her article Kid Stuff, Knefel describes her students through the eyes of someone who knows the pressures placed upon them, and is awed by their ability to maintain their sense of “fun” despite them. Butterfly describes two different scenes of play from her childhood, and confesses that she felt no difference between the two. Both the article and the post’s descriptions of play evince the necessity of play to children’s development, and how they use play to deal with environmental pressures. It is crucial for their development and mental health, but also is a way to give them agency in a world that has almost total authority over them. This instinct to play when life becomes too stressful is one of the most powerful forces on this earth; as Butterfly so aptly states, “Kids just want to play, and they’ll find a way to do so regardless.”
Works Cited
"Butterfly" "Play in My Two Neighborhoods." Serendip Studio's One World. N.p., 21 Sept. 2015. Web. 02 Oct. 2015.
Knefel, Molly. "Kid Stuff." The New Inquiry. N.p., 16 July 2015. Web. 1 Oct. 2015.