In a world that feels perpetually behind schedule, where parenting often feels like project management, it’s easy to relegate play to the sidelines. It becomes the reward after the homework is done, the screen-free filler between obligations, the thing we hope our kids do while we tackle the real work of keeping life afloat.
But what if we treated play as the real work that it is?
What if it’s the very ground upon which discipline, emotional regulation, values, boundaries, and deep social learning are built?
Play Is the Original Language of Learning
From the moment a child reaches out to grasp a rattle or lock eyes in peekaboo, they are speaking the native tongue of play. Through interaction, imitation, discovery, and joy, they begin to understand their world.
Too often, we try to teach the things that play reveals effortlessly.
Discipline, for instance, is often framed as something we must impose. But real discipline (the self-possession that arises from internal motivation, not external fear) emerges when a child feels safe, seen, and engaged. And because play activates the brain’s social engagement system, it creates a container of safety, belonging, and cooperation that invites participation instead of resistance. It helps kids practice navigating power, impulse, fairness, frustration, and repair, with easy buy-in (and no lecture required).
Boundaries Come Alive In Play
Children don’t learn boundaries just because we say “no” clearly or consistently. They learn boundaries by bumping into them, again and again, in low-stakes ways, with room to negotiate, feel, and adapt.
Whether they’re sword fighting with pool noodles, learning when to pause a game because someone’s crying, or role-playing how a dragon negotiates a peace treaty, kids get to explore the invisible lines between self and other, and between desire and consequence.
And when we as parents step into the game (e.g. the grumpy troll under the bridge or the kitchen monster enforcing bedtime) we model healthy limits with warmth, flexibility, and just enough absurdity to help it stick.
Risk Is a Vital Ingredient in Play
Play isn’t always tidy, safe, or predictable, and that’s part of its wisdom.
When children climb too high, build something that might collapse, break a rule in a game, or pretend to be something wild and fierce, get into a heated argument with a friend, they are engaging with risk in a developmentally necessary way. They’re stretching into new territory, testing their strength, navigating failure, and discovering resilience.
As parents, we have very strong, beautiful instincts to protect our children. Isn’t safety our primary job?! Well, yes, and so is preparing them for a world that requires courage. An overly sanitized, protected childhood robs children of their necessary growth. When children take appropriate risks in the presence of our warm, watchful attention, they learn to trust themselves and the world.
Values Are Caught, Not Taught
We want our children to internalize our values: kindness, persistence, courage, generosity. And yet, values aren’t absorbed through lectures. They’re absorbed through embodiment, especially in moments of play.
Play is where empathy is practiced. Where turn-taking becomes real. Where co-created storylines get negotiated, mistakes are made and repaired. It’s where children try on different roles and moral universes. They learn how to navigate their own desires and needs with those of others.
Play Is the Soft Thread of Connection
And perhaps most importantly, play is bonding. It is how our children feel us with them, not over them. It creates moments of shared joy that become the emotional glue for everything else.
In these moments, we remind ourselves and them that we are not here to manage behavior as much as cultivate belonging. This foundation of emotional security makes all the harder conversations easier. Children listen better when they feel connected. They regulate more easily when they’ve had laughter and touch. They respect boundaries more when they’ve had space to challenge and test them in safe ways.
By the way, connection need not always look like a heart-to-heart. Sometimes it’s a snowball fight. Sometimes it’s a silly voice reading a bedtime story. Sometimes it’s a wrestling match, a messy art project, an impromptu dance party, or a diy escape room ;).
In a World That’s Forgotten How to Play, Be the One Who Remembers
Play requires us to slow down, to risk looking foolish, to enter our child’s world without an agenda. That can feel vulnerable. Perhaps unnatural, especially if we weren’t played with ourselves. It can bring up a host of uncomfortable feelings and impulses resulting from our own childhood imprinting: feeling trapped, painfully bored, fiercely resistant. When these feelings come up, be easy with yourself – your own playfulness might just be buried under all the “necessary” motives of adulting that have been reinforced since your youth.
Look for easy doorways, take it slow, and remember there are thousands of ways to play.
If we want to raise resilient, relationally wise, emotionally attuned kids, we must re-learn the wisdom of play. Not as a reward or a distraction. But as the sacred laboratory of growing up.
Next, we’ll explore specific ways to play with your kids for just 5 minutes a day that support brain development.
Until Then, Try this:
This week, set a timer for 5 minutes. Put away all distractions. Follow your child’s lead in whatever they’re doing. No corrections, no “teaching moments”. Just notice, join, and enjoy.
When the timer ends, thank yourself. You’re strengthening a muscle our culture has let atrophy: the art of giving undivided, playful attention.