PROPERTIES OF PLAY Apparently purposeless (done for its own sake) Voluntary Inherent attraction Freedom from time Diminished consciousness of self Improvisational potential Continuation desire

Authentic play comes from deep down inside us. It’s not formed or motivated solely by others. Real play interacts with and involves the outside world, but it fundamentally expresses the needs and desires of the player. It emerges from the imaginative force within. That’s part of the adaptive power of play: with a pinch of pleasure, it integrates

This leads to . . . Surprise, the unexpected, a discovery, a new sensation or idea, or shifting perspective. This produces . . . Pleasure, a good feeling, like the pleasure we feel at the unexpected twist in the punch line of a good joke. Next we have . . . Understanding, the acquisition of new knowledge, a synthesizing of distinct and separate

Part of the license to play freely comes from being in an environment that is structured enough to provide a feeling of safety, so that the child is confident that nothing bad is going to happen.

Part of the joy and pain of being a parent is seeing our own parents in ourselves, seeing their good parts and flaws repeated in our voices. The joys and pains also come from seeing ourselves in our kids, and remembering our own happy days and hurtful traumas reflected in their experiences. If we are not completely full of ourselves or too serious,

The play-driven pleasures associated with exploratory body movements, rhythmic early speech (moving vocal cords), locomotor and rotational activity are done for their own sake; they are pleasurable and intrinsically playful. Yet they also help sculpt the brain.

These properties are what make play, for me, the essence of freedom. The things that most tie you down or constrain you—the need to be practical, to follow established rules, to please others, to make good use of time, all wrapped up in a self-conscious guilt—are eliminated. Play is its own reward, its own reason for being.

Eberle says that play involves: Anticipation, waiting with expectation, wondering what will happen, curiosity, a little anxiety, perhaps because there is a slight uncertainty or risk involved (can we hit the baseball and get safely on base?), although the risk cannot be so great that it overwhelms the fun.

And as lab managers at JPL discovered, object play with the hands creates a brain that is better suited for understanding and solving problems of all sorts.