Do you ever think about how different the world our kids are growing up in is from the one of our childhoods?

When I was growing up in rural Colorado, the only place to swim in the winter was the Holiday Inn (years before Chingy made the "Holidae In" sound cool in his song).

It was a small, amoeba-shaped pool that graduated from 3' deep to 5'. That's it.

Now, I take my daughter swimming at our local rec center.

It has four slides, two of which you can tube in a one-person or double tube, a structure with water guns and a giant pouring bucket, two hot tubs, a lazy river, a netted obstacle course, and a massive, shallow open swim area.

It's so not a pool.

It's a water park.

Have you noticed how many more options there are for child entertainment now than when we were kids?

Tablets, trampoline parks, rec center water-parks-masquerading-as-pools, ninja gyms, arcades, climbing gyms, indoor sky diving, kid-centric museums, innumerable on-demand kids shows, and more and more and more.

We're kind of obsessed with entertaining our kids.

LP gets invited over for "playdates," and they're planned to the minute with art projects, Pinterest-worthy snacks, and Activities (with a capital A).

It's not just kids we're concerned with entertaining -- our country spent $8.91 billion at the Box Office last year.

But it's problematic when some kinds of entertainment, particularly on screens, get in the way of children's PLAY.

Play and entertainment are not the same.

They *seem* like they are, but they're not.

Entertainment is externally driven - the activity outside the child is inherently entertaining.

Entertainment is about consumption.

Play is about invention.

Play is an outward expression of a child's inner world.

Play is creation. It reflects the child's voice and viewpoint.

Play is how children to make sense of this complex adult world.

In their early years, play is how our children learn...well, everything! Including, and especially, about themselves and their place in the world.

If that sounds overstated, it's not.

Entertainment is okay sometimes. But not in a quantity that doesn't leave space for play.

Ground-breaking child psychologist Jean Piaget said, "Play is the work of children."

Anything that gets in the way of this work or supersedes play is overriding developmentally critical work.

Also, key point: Play is FUN!

Consider this:

We were THRILLED to go to the Holiday Inn. We invented dozens of games to play in the water. Nothing outstripped the joy of a particularly epic cannonball!

Sharks and minnows, handstand competitions, marco polo, holding our breath until it felt like our skinny chests would explode, underwater summersaulting, pirates and mermaids...

The simple feel of being held and subduing the surrounding noise while practicing floating.

Sure we'd have taken a water slide.

But we didn't need one. The companionship of friends and our imaginations were enough.

Play was enough.

In fact, it was everything.

Jenna Lee "PS - Play matters for adults too" Dillon

PS - What's your favorite adult form of play? Hit reply and share it with me. Mine is volleyball!

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