I spent thirty years in an office surrounded by people who had impressive degrees and stellar academic records. Some of them were wonderful to work with.
Others? Well, let’s just say their report cards hadn’t predicted much about how they’d handle conflict, collaborate on projects, or navigate the messy realities of adult life.
Now that I spend my afternoons watching my grandchildren turn cardboard boxes into spaceships and negotiate elaborate rules for imaginary kingdoms, I find myself thinking about what actually shapes a person.
And the research backs up what I’ve suspected for years: those hours of unstructured play between ages 3 and 7 are doing something profound that no worksheet or early reading program can replicate.
Play is the original laboratory for being human
When a four-year-old decides that the living room floor is lava and the couch cushions are the only safe islands, something remarkable is happening in their brain.
They’re not just burning off energy. They’re building the neural pathways that will eventually help them solve problems, manage their emotions, and understand other people.
Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, has spent decades studying the role of play in human development.
As he has noted, play is a biological necessity that shapes the brain and makes us more adaptable, innovative, and resilient. His research suggests that play deprivation in childhood can have lasting effects on emotional regulation and social competence well into adulthood.
Think about what happens during a simple game of pretend. Your child has to imagine something that isn’t there, hold that idea in their mind, and act on it.
They have to communicate their vision to playmates, negotiate when someone else has a different idea, and adapt when the game takes unexpected turns. These are executive function skills, and they’re the same ones that will help them succeed in careers, relationships, and life’s inevitable curveballs.
The quiet power of make-believe
My youngest granddaughter has an imaginary friend named Pickle. Pickle has very specific opinions about breakfast foods and refuses to wear anything purple. At first, I’ll admit, I found the whole thing a bit odd.
But watching her navigate Pickle’s preferences has taught me something about how children develop empathy.
When children engage in pretend play, they practice stepping outside themselves. They become the doctor, the patient, the dragon, and the knight.
Each role requires them to consider a different perspective, to imagine how someone else might think or feel. This is the foundation of empathy, and it’s being built through play long before any formal social-emotional curriculum enters the picture.
Research from the American Academy of Pediatrics confirms this. Their clinical report on the power of play emphasizes that play promotes the development of social-emotional skills, including the ability to understand and respond to others’ emotions.
These aren’t soft skills. They’re the skills that determine whether someone becomes a good partner, parent, colleague, and friend.
What grades actually measure
I want to be clear here. I’m not saying education doesn’t matter. Of course it does. But we’ve developed a cultural obsession with early academic achievement that sometimes blinds us to what’s really going on in child development.
Grades measure a narrow set of abilities: memory, test-taking skills, the capacity to sit still and follow instructions.
These are useful, certainly. But they don’t measure creativity, resilience, emotional intelligence, or the ability to collaborate with others. They don’t capture whether a child can bounce back from failure or approach a new situation with curiosity rather than fear.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I was an average student at best. My report cards were filled with comments about daydreaming and talking too much.
Yet those same tendencies, the ones that frustrated my teachers, turned out to be assets in my adult life. I learned to connect with people, to think creatively, to find solutions that weren’t in the textbook.
And where did I first practice those skills? On the playground, in the backyard, in the elaborate games my friends and I invented with nothing but sticks and imagination.
The types of play that matter most
Not all play is created equal when it comes to personality development. While any play has value, certain types seem to have an outsized impact on who children become.
Unstructured free play, where children direct their own activities without adult intervention, is particularly powerful. This is where children learn to make decisions, solve problems, and manage their own emotions when things don’t go their way.
It’s messy and sometimes frustrating to watch, but that’s precisely where the growth happens.
Physical play, including the rough-and-tumble variety that makes many parents nervous, teaches children about boundaries, self-control, and reading social cues. When two kids are wrestling and one says stop, the other learns to listen. That lesson will serve them for the rest of their lives.
Social play with peers is where children practice negotiation, compromise, and conflict resolution. They learn that other people have different ideas and that working together often requires giving up some of what you want. These are the skills that make someone a good team member, a good neighbor, a good citizen.
And creative play, whether it’s building with blocks, making art, or inventing stories, develops the kind of flexible thinking that helps people adapt to change and come up with innovative solutions. In a world that’s changing faster than ever, this adaptability may be the most valuable trait of all.
What happens when play gets squeezed out
Here’s what worries me. Over the past few decades, we’ve seen a dramatic decline in children’s free play time.
Recess has been shortened or eliminated in many schools. Afternoons are packed with structured activities. Even preschools have become increasingly academic, with less time for the kind of open-ended play that builds these crucial skills.
The consequences are starting to show. Rates of anxiety and depression among young people have climbed steadily. Many college students struggle with basic problem-solving and emotional regulation. Employers report that young workers often lack the soft skills needed to succeed in the workplace.
I’m not suggesting that play deprivation is the only cause of these trends. The world is complicated, and so are people. But when we look at what play does for developing brains and then look at what happens when it’s missing, the connection seems hard to ignore.
Dr. Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College, has written extensively about this phenomenon. His work suggests that the decline in play is directly connected to rising rates of mental health challenges among young people.
When children don’t have opportunities to practice managing their own lives through play, they don’t develop the sense of competence and control that protects against anxiety and depression.
Practical ways to protect play
So what can parents do? The good news is that protecting play doesn’t require expensive programs or complicated interventions. Often, it means doing less rather than more.
Resist the urge to fill every moment with structured activities. Children need time that belongs to them, time when they decide what to do and how to do it. Boredom isn’t a problem to be solved. It’s often the doorway to creativity.
Create environments that invite play. This doesn’t mean buying lots of toys. In fact, fewer toys often lead to more imaginative play. Open-ended materials like blocks, art supplies, and dress-up clothes give children room to invent. So does access to nature, where a stick can become anything.
Step back when you can. I know how tempting it is to jump in and direct the action, especially when the game seems to be going off the rails. But children learn the most when they’re working things out themselves. Save your interventions for safety issues and let them navigate the rest.
Value play as much as you value academics. When we ask children about their day, we often focus on what they learned in school. Try asking about what they played, who they played with, and what they invented. The message matters.
The long view of childhood
When I look at my grandchildren, I don’t see future test scores or college applications. I see people in the making. And I’ve lived long enough to know that the qualities that matter most in adulthood, kindness, resilience, creativity, the ability to connect with others, aren’t built through worksheets and flashcards.
They’re built in those chaotic, joyful, sometimes frustrating hours of play. They’re built when a child figures out how to include a reluctant playmate, or bounces back after their block tower falls, or invents a whole world out of nothing but imagination.
The grades will come and go. Most of us can’t remember what we got on our third-grade spelling tests. But the person we became through all those hours of play? That stays with us forever.
What do you remember most vividly from your own childhood, the lessons in the classroom or the games on the playground?
