Importance of play in childhood

Contributions of games for children

The game is an activity, as well as enjoyable, necessary for cognitive (intellectual) and affective (emotional) of the child. The game encourages spontaneous and free creativity of children and promote their maturation. Children have few opportunities to play freely. Sometimes, we believe that " play by play "is a waste of time and would be more profitable to take advantage of every opportunity to learn something useful.
However, through play, children begin to understand how things work, which may or may not be with them, they discover that there are rules of causality, probability and behavior that must be accepted if you want others to play with them . Children's games should be regarded as their most serious actions, said Montaigne. Spontaneous play is full of meaning because it arises because of internal processes that we do not understand but we must respect. If you want to know the children, their world is conscious and unconscious need to understand the game, watching them discover their evolutionary acquisitions, their concerns, fears , needs and wants those who can not express with words and finding out through the game.

Game and reality: the value of symbolic play (pretend play)

The types of games children show their evolution :
- In the acquisition stage of sensory-motor skills are recommended functional games, action games, feelings and movements .
- In the early stages of child's thinking in the start thinking in concrete operations, are recommended fiction games, symbolic or representational .

- At the stage of formal thought and concentration are best regulated and structured games, sports, competition . In addition, symbolic play or fiction is the most appreciated, is forced to adapt to an adult social world and a physical reality that still does not understand the child needs to invent your own world from that which lives, but translating it into a symbolic language personnel, with the outside world to adapt to their needs. Through play the child fiction gradually assimilates the external world, it develops and adapts to it in a continuous process of maturation.

Game and intellectual development

Children begin to use symbols from the second year of life (eg, saying a dog saying "wow" or to act as if drinking from a cup), repeating actions that have been in adults, accounting for events that have lived or imitating the operation of certain objects. In that imitate the child comes the assimilation of observed situations and relationships in the world around him. Part of concrete models to later reach the concentration . The symbolic function is a common representation goal for the game and other human activities such as language . When it fails the acquisition and use of the symbolic function (aphasia, autism , mental retardation ...) reveals the importance of it in personal maturity and the need to enhance practice in childhood spontaneous game that can be achieved appropriate levels at each developmental stage.

Game and personality

Sometimes, certain difficulties, which may seem insurmountable to the child, can be met through the game , always addressing and raising their way one by one aspect of the problem.

The jealousy on the birth of a new sibling , for example, is a common type of conflict, which often appear masked in the games in response to internal processes that the same child unknown, but to help you accept that reality, to represent the problem of a new and pleasing to him, as when his dummy is the same way that he wants to be treated or reacted in their game as would have done in reality. In the game there is a match between the imaginable (everything is possible) and allowed (rules of conduct), in which the child has time to learn what is feasible and accurate while allowing a graceful exit to their impulses.

The game is an essential activity

- The game is necessary for the intellectual, emotional and social .
- Allows three basic functions of psychic maturation: assimilation, understanding and adapting to external reality.
- offer the child requires time and favorable media so you can make their own way.
- Promotes early social acquisitions, the skills of social communication . It is a preparation for adulthood.
- As exploratory behavior, promotes the creation of fields of action and creativity.
- has a sense for the child. When any game is interrupted, is deprived of the outcome of a story created by himself with a purpose that does not always comprehend.