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Play with Meaning

In a time when parents are faced with a barrage of information and advice on how to teach their kids at home, it can be hard to decipher right from wrong. One of the easiest and most effective ways to teach kids is through play. Ballito occupational therapist Rachel Carey offers some advice on how to make meaningful the time you spend playing with your child.

A qualified occupational therapist and mother of two small boys, Rachel strongly believes that a child’s learning should be playful and fun.
“I read a statistic the other day, which says it takes approximately 400 repetitions of an activity to create a new synapse in the brain, unless it is done in play, in which case it takes between 10 and 20 repetitions,” says Rachel who lives in Ballito with her husband Andrew and two sons, Joey and Benji, aged 5 and 3.
At the beginning of lockdown, Rachel says she realised how much help and support parents needed in terms of development for their kids, so she started an Instagram account to share some ideas. “I use the account to give daily developmental play ideas. The platform also allows me to share my passion for early childhood development and what is happening in the child’s brain at this key time.”

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We asked Rachel about the importance of occupational therapy in the current pandemic circumstances. “Imagine development as a wall made up of bricks, with each developmental skill represented by one of those bricks. At the top, resting on the wall, are the child’s functional skills like reading, writing, maths, spelling etc. The more bricks you have in this wall, the sturdier it will be. Remove one brick and it gets a little shaky. Remove another and another and another and soon you have a very wobbly wall onto which few functional skills can rest. Unfortunately, in our modern society, our children don’t have as much exposure to all the experiential learning that they once did. A huge emphasis is placed on cognitive learning without them always having the basis of sensory learning needed for a strong learning base. This coupled with other things like screen time, childhood seats and walkers, anxious parents, children who are anxious themselves, and sometimes a familial and genetic predisposition all contribute to removing blocks from that wall. In our current time of pandemic, children’s play opportunities, engagement and anxiety levels are all further affected making it a particularly at risk time for them developmentally in some ways. Occupational therapy is a play-based way to strengthen this developmental wall so that children can reach their potential with their functional skills resting on the wall.”

Rachel’s tips for making play meaningful:
• Let your child lead you: Often, we plan what we think is a fun activity for our children and they are interested in it for about five minutes after which they move onto something else, abandoning our carefully planned activity. Children will seek out learning and sensory experiences where they most need it. Letting them choose their own play and then guiding them and facilitating them to extend this play, is going to make it most meaningful. If you let your child choose the play they are interested in and that meets their sensory needs, and then build on this play to extend their learning, you create meaningful play for the child.
• Lose the instruction: Once you have your child playing in an activity of their choice, don’t try to ‘teach’ them. Connection is key and connecting with you in play is what is going to make that learning spontaneous. Inserting a silly little song or rhyme or posing questions to them and helping guide them to the answer are strategies that keep that connection key.
• Don’t get caught up in the end product: For children, it is the process that is important. It is good to have your eye on the goal but don’t let this rob the activity of fun and spontaneity. Your child will gain far more from making the lopsided, finger squished biscuits that they have enjoyed and had fun making and experienced a whole heap of tactile sensory feedback while doing, than they will from watching you make perfect biscuits.

Rachel’s top 3 play tricks:
1. Have a dress-up box – it doesn’t need to be fancy or elaborate but pop a few different items in there to promote imaginary play. We have a very haphazard dress-up box with toilet-roll binoculars, paper masks, puppets, old sports medals, a toy fishing rod, a snorkel set and some odd clothing items in it. It is amazing what the boys come up with and how they turn these items into their pretend and fantasy play. Imagination is almost always for us the key that turns the lock to the world of child-led play.
2. Have a few tools in your play tool kit to help you. I am never without tape and a variety of different ropes – and I probably hold the record for having the most children’s scissors in one place outside of a school or shop! I also keep boxes and packaging to make all sorts of props. You know your children and the things that they like. These are the items which work well in our house and I know that whatever the game, I can extend it using one or some of these.
3. Don’t always feel that you need to entertain your children. Let them come up with the ideas sometimes. We have the most amazing basket of items for making things (it’s pretty much my recycling bin) and we call it our creation station. Sometimes I suggest we make something for a particular game that we are playing but sometimes I just empty it out onto the floor with some scissors, tape, glue sticks and stickers and let the kids come up with whatever they want to make themselves. I’m there to help if they need me but it is entirely their ideas and motivation.

Details: Rachel Carey: [email protected], IG: @rachie_ot_mom, 076 624 8164

Text: Leah Shone | Photographs: SAMANATHA MABER

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