How come you don’t like to play?
By Lisa Forbes
Last night I was tucking my 5-year-old into her bed and out of the blue she said: “mommy, how come you don’t like to play?”
You know in the movies when the music stops and the record screeches? That’s what it felt like happened. Play is everything to me. I value it. I infuse it into my classes so how come this child perceives me as not liking play? With my kids, I’m goofy and have dance parties and play practical jokes, so what gives, tiny human?
So, I said: “I love to play but maybe the way I play is different than the way you play.” That was the nice way of saying: “I don’t find playing make-believe unicorns all that fun.”
This got me thinking about how the type of play that adults enjoy also varies and that got me wondering how that impacts how we implement play in our classes. I then thought about the book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.
Basically, there are five different love languages (words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch). We all have varying love languages and when it’s “spoken,” it makes us feel loved and appreciated. Sometimes within couple relationships, the love languages match and sometimes they don’t.
For example, my top love language is quality time so if my partner cleans the house, fills my gas tank, picks up the dry cleaning – all that is nice, I’m grateful he did it but it doesn’t make me feel extremely loved. To me, it feels more like logistical things that needed to happen. But if he wanted to spend time with just me, without the kids, that would feel loving and as though he appreciates me.
Long story to say, maybe we all have play languages too. My play co-conspirator, David, thinks playing dungeons and dragons is a grand ol’ play time but for me that sounds pretty miserable. So considering this idea of play languages, how does this help us or hinder us in designing play into our classrooms? What even are the play languages?