Richard Hogan: Why play is so important for children — and adults

Richard Hogan: "We must not forget how to play. It keeps us young and healthy, and immunises us to stress." Picture: Moya Nolan

The adult world can be predictable: Lunches to be made, uniforms washed, lifts here and lifts there, bedtime routines, filling and emptying the dishwasher, bringing out the bins.Oh, I could go on with the litany of banal acts we all get caught repeating as grown-ups.

But we should never consign ‘play’ to childhood. I sit with so many adults in my clinic who have lost contact with their playful self.

They are surprised when I ask them: When was the last time you did anything fun or spontaneous?

The silence is profound as they search around the room for the answer.

The adult world can be devoid of spontaneity. Those mundane responsibilities can be the antithesis of playful fun, but we should never lose contact with ‘play’.

When I think of my grandmother, who lived with us until she was 94 years of age, I think of a playful messer who loved ‘divilment’.

I’d often lean my forehead on hers and say, “How old do you feel now, Gran?” She’d smile and say, “21 boyeen.”

She’d sing around the house, “This lovely day has flown away”. I’d watch her from the kitchen window, her back bent, feeding the birds.

She’d tell me stories of love lost and won, she’d playfully roll the corners of a newspaper perfectly tight, explaining that’s how they lit fires when they had no money or such things as firelighters, a cup of tea at six o’clock on the dot; everything was play for her.

She never took anything too seriously; she even started to read books at 80, never having read one before then, explaining the phenomenon by saying, “I must be a late developer.”

When she broke her hip and was in the hospital, and she saw me coming in with the wheelchair, she whispered, “Are you here to bust me out, boyeen?”

“I am, girl.”

Play is a state of mind. It is a way of viewing the world. And it has medicinal qualities.

When we used to travel, by car, to France, for our summer holidays, my father used to stick a napkin under his sunglasses as we approached customs, and say, “They’ll never take me alive.”

Richard Hogan: The American Psychological Association highlights that leisure activities can significantly reduce stress and depression. Study after study shows that those who engage in regular fun activities and hobbies report lower levels of stress and higher levels of happiness and fulfilment. So, we should play.

My mother, too, was always playing and never taking life too seriously.

Her French was a combination of English, what she thought sounded French, and then a little bit of gibberish.

“Excuse me, monsieur, avvez vous seen le brush orange,” she asked a bemused French
person working behind the counter of a butcher.

She was looking for a brush that happened to be orange, which she had misplaced. I still smile when I think of her earnest effort, and the look on the French butcher’s face.

Unfortunately, he had not seen whatever the animated Irish woman in front of him was searching for.

The American Psychological Association highlights that leisure activities can significantly reduce stress and depression. Study after study shows that those who engage in regular fun activities and hobbies report lower levels of stress and higher levels of happiness and fulfilment.

So, we should play.

Play is such an important part of my relationship with my daughters. We make a game out of everything.

When they were younger and I wanted to immunise them to the comments they would inevitably hear in the school yard, I devised a game called ‘bully school’.

When I wanted them to eat vegetables, my left thumb became a joystick to steer the spoon in my right hand. ‘More,’ they shouted as they commandeered the vegetables into their mouths.

When getting them up the stairs to bed became a struggle, I devised a game called ‘Hippopotamus and the Hare’.

I was the big hippo chasing them up the stairs. They never ran so fast up those stairs to bed. My eldest daughter recently said to me, as she saw her younger sisters flying up the stairs, ‘clever dad’.

She was once a great player of the game. Not so anymore. Now I have to devise a game to get her down the stairs!

Bad Santa arrives when I’m shaving and tries to kiss them with the foam on my face. Drexel is a bad dude who hates children. They wrote a song about how bad he is!

And Reginald is their best friend, always protecting them. Once, when my youngest daughter was asked, in school, about who she loves, she said, “Reginald!”

They have learned to view the world through a playful prism, which will help them through the slings and arrows of life, as it has done for myself and my wife.

Yesterday, we headed off for a day of spontaneous fun. We just got on a train and let it take us where it was going. We ended up in Bray. There was delight in my children’s eyes, wondering where we might end up, the youngest hoping for Australia.

Of course, the teenager was off somewhere with her buddies. That’s her play now.

But my love of play comes from my parents. When it was sunny in Cork, which wasn’t very often, they’d take us out of school and head off to Fountainstown for the day.

That was magic for a childish soul. The world was humming away with its regularity while we took a step off and played in the cold sands of Fountainstown or Inchydoney.

Smiling, I passed that hedge cut into the shape of a person thumbing. I passed that hedge last week down in West Cork, and told my children they had been sitting there since I was their age, wouldn’t you think someone would stop and give them a bloody lift.

My children roared as they saw the hedge. The people who live in that house have been playing for more than 40 years with that hedge. Magic.

We must not forget how to play. It keeps us young and healthy, and immunises us to stress.

Play on.