How Children Use Play to Express Their Emotions
Discovering new emotions plays an important role in childhood development. As they grow, children experience increasingly complex emotions. While adults are familiar with feelings of jealousy, cheerfulness, and excitement, these nuanced emotions can feel overwhelming to a child experiencing them for the first time. As a result, kids don’t always understand how to label their feelings and deal with them in a healthy, productive way.
Because children may be unable to understand and verbalize what they feel, the adults in their lives have the essential role of providing tools that allow them to express their emotions productively. Children develop emotional intelligence through their experiences, and with the right guidance, adults can help children grow in this area. Creating spaces for children to play gives them a constructive, tangible way to express emotions in a healthy way.
Understanding Children’s Emotions
Children deal with many of the same emotions as adults, from frustration and fear to love and excitement. Though the range of feelings is similar, children experience and express these emotions differently.
This is largely because kids are more likely to react with instinct, whereas adults can process their emotions and respond more rationally to situations. This is because, as an adult, the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for rational thinking — is fully developed.
Of course, young children may also lack the words and coping skills to express how they feel. When children feel frustrated, hungry, tired or hurt, they may respond by throwing a tantrum as a gut reaction to release their emotions and get immediate attention.
Even though kids’ brains will only fully mature as they grow up, it’s essential to recognize and validate their emotions. It’s also important not to expect more of children socially and emotionally than what is appropriate for their age and stage of development. This way, you can give them the tools they need to recognize and regulate their emotions in a healthy way.
The Role of Play in Child Development
Play is an integral and essential part of childhood development. Children learn through play, and it greatly contributes to their overall well-being and development in several ways:
- Cognitively: Children are engaged when they play. Play is interactive, enjoyable, and fascinating. The various forms of play allow kids to learn problem-solving and creativity in a way that boosts their cognitive growth.
- Physically: Kids can explore the full range of their bodies through play. As they jump, skip, hop, balance, swing, slide, and climb, they learn vital fine and gross motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and balance. Children also get to enjoy the benefits of physical fitness when they play.
- Emotionally: Children can explore a range of emotions while playing. As they face and overcome obstacles — whether the monkey bars or mustering the courage to make friends — they learn what being nervous, scared, excited, brave, accomplished, and confident feels like. Playing, especially physically engaging play on a playground, also provides a natural release for pent-up emotions.
- Socially: Play can be independent, but more often than not, it involves learning how to share, understanding teamwork, and navigating friendships. Through this, children may develop social skills like empathy, communication, and leadership.
Types of Play Kids Use to Express Emotions
What makes play so special and effective is how diverse it is. Children have the opportunity to learn an array of skills through various forms of play:
1. Pretend Play
Using imagination offers a host of benefits to a child’s development, including the ability to express their emotions in a safe space outside the real world. Imaginative play teaches kids empathy because they have to enter into another person’s shoes and imagine life beyond themselves to play a character.
This play gives children a way to express their feelings by acting them out. Kids who are introverted or eager to please others may struggle with the prospect of letting people down or expressing a feeling that might hurt someone. Pretend play gives them a redirected outlet to practice expressing their emotions in a non-confrontational way.
2. Physical Exertion
Spending time outside exercising gives kids the opportunity to work through emotions caused by pent-up energy. They might feel frustrated or anxious after sitting for too long. Letting them exercise gives them a non-destructive way to get out energy instead of breaking or destroying things or having tantrums. Playing in open spaces especially gives children a blank canvas to express themselves physically.
3. Playing With Others
Kids model their behavior based on what they see others do. When they watch kids of different ages, backgrounds, and abilities express their emotions through play, they become aware of options they may not have considered before. Additionally, playing with others gives kids an opportunity to talk to someone about their emotions, which helps them verbally process what they feel and get simple feedback on their situation.
4. Messy Play
Emotions get messy and complicated — so much so that even adults can have trouble expressing them. Not every emotion fits neatly in the category of “sad” or “happy.” Giving children unstructured play with no rules or objectives gives them a chance to work out their emotions in a safe space and non-destructively. For example, sandboxes and water tables have no instructions or rules, which allows kids to take control of their situation.
5. Dramatic Play
Kids love to reenact stories they read or see on television. When they encounter books or movies where characters go through the same conflicts they experience, they get to see how others handle their problems. If the character’s coping mechanism creates a successful result, kids may try using that technique as well. Many kids love performing, so getting to use the environment around them to tell a story helps them process the story by living it out for themselves.
Playgrounds serve as excellent backdrops for dramatic play. A child could imagine an evil troll lives just below the playground bridge and decide they need to use wit to outsmart the clever creature. The tower before the slide could serve as an imaginary mountain they must reach to face their fear of heights. Their imagination can go wild as a way to help them creatively cope with the real emotions they experience in a make-believe environment.
Experimenting With Independence Through Play
Play provides a controlled environment where children can practice independence and learn about the consequences of their actions. For example, if a child promises she will swing with her friend and then decides to play cops and robbers, the child’s friend could express how she feels hurt and lonely because of the broken promise. The child could also think of creative solutions for the situation, such as asking her friend to play cops and robbers with her and their new friends. This choice could help the kids form closer friendships and learn that including people makes everyone feel happy.
On the other hand, children could experiment with choosing to cheat when they play cops and robbers. They may learn the consequences of their actions when their friends don’t want to play with a cheater. In both examples, the children are able to experiment with communication, form relationships, solve problems, and compromise — all because they have the opportunity to play.
Children can utilize play as an effective tool to help them learn and process many of these emotions and concepts.
Factors Influencing Children’s Use of Play to Express Emotions
Though play is an effective way for children to explore and develop emotions, there can sometimes be mitigating factors that impact a child’s emotional development:
- Environment: For some families, circumstances beyond their control affect children. Low income, lack of education, or limited access to essential resources greatly impact families, and, in turn, a child’s development and ability to play.
- Health: A child’s health is a major factor in how they are able to play, grow, and express emotions.
- Family circumstances: Children from homes facing stressful situations, like a lack of security and stability, may act out during play or be extremely introverted and disengaged.
As educators, it is crucial to take the right steps to help children facing challenges engage in play. Sometimes, all it takes is gentle encouragement. Other times, bigger steps, such as referring the child to counseling or reaching out for resources and other avenues of help, may be necessary.
The important part is to recognize when children are struggling and determine how you can help them through play as a healthy way to navigate their challenges.
With guidance, children learn that some ways to express emotions are healthier than others. Giving kids the tools to express emotion through play sets them up for healthy relationships and stronger emotional tolerance than relying on unproductive means of expression.
Play gives children a great opportunity to positively and safely convey their feelings. They get to experiment with physical displays of emotions and hone the communication tools needed to verbalize those thoughts to others around them.
Play and Continued Emotional Development
Play becomes less and less of a part of adults’ lives as they age, but playing means the world to children and serves an important role in their development. Showing kids they can use play as a tool to express emotions could be a game-changer for children who feel misunderstood. Play and emotions go hand in hand during childhood development.
Adults should try to avoid suppressing a child’s expression of emotions. Doing so teaches children to bottle up what they feel, which can lead to poor coping mechanisms later on in life. Instead, adults can focus on giving kids opportunities to redirect their feelings and healthily express them so they can work through their feelings non-destructively. This helps children discover and develop the tools to continue using positive coping mechanisms in the future.
A well-stocked and exciting playground serves as an excellent option for one of a child’s emotional development tools. Only a child’s imagination limits the possibilities for constructive play. Playgrounds give children a space to put their imaginations into practice and develop both physically and mentally. Playing outside in a safe space offers many social, emotional, and physical benefits, and even 15 minutes of free play can reset a child’s emotional state. Having an accessible, safe playground gives kids the opportunity to play freely and pursue the development they need to become healthy, emotionally balanced adults in the future.
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A playground gives children the opportunity to be and discover their emotions, all while spending time learning alongside others. Building a playground kids are excited to use encourages them to play and gives them a safe space to help develop their emotional awareness.
If you’re looking for playground equipment that allows children to express themselves and learn vital communication skills through play, contact Little Tikes Commercial today! Our expert team is happy to help you learn more about how we create safe and exciting environments for kids to grow and assist you in choosing the right equipment for your needs.
