"My Connections to Play"

          As a child we would spend hours exploring leaves, rocks, sticks , water and clay down at the creek.

           Coming from a family of 8 children there was always someone to play basketball with.

 My father was a wheat farmer so as young children we spent hours playing in the wheat trucks.

This picture reminded me of the times we would play in the driveway and use objects to pretend we had a  house and a neighborhood.  We would drive our tricycles on our made up roads.

PLAY QUOTES

"In childhood there is no distinction between play and work (Almon, 2002)"
"Pretend play requires extended uninterrupted time periods to develop complexity (Berger, 2002)"

HOW PLAY HAS CHANGED:
Forty years ago children used their imaginations more to play.  I lived on a farm and we made our own intertainment with whatever materials we could find in nature and we were able to spend hours without being interrupted.  Today, children have more electronic games and toys that do not allow them to use their imaginations or get as much physical activity, as well as less unstructured play.

We still play with board games, have yoyo's, balls, dolls, jacks, stuffed animals and wheeled vehicles, but the difference today is that we have video games, electronic games and such resulting in less cognitive thinking skills, less imagination and less physical activity.  I hope we can get back to more natural playscapes and reconnect with yesterday.  In the book, Last Child In The Woods Richard Louv states that, "direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for physical and emotional health of children and adults.  Play is just as important for adults as it is for children. 

INTERESTING STATISTIC:
Out of 15,000 school districts surveyed in 1999, 40% were eliminating recess or cutting back on it.  Only three states require recess and 10 recommend it (NYT).  

   

Child Development and Public Health

I chose the topic of SIDS because it seems to be a hot topic and one that is still unresolved.  Since I work one on one with child care providers we try and educate and pass on any new information that comes out on the topic.  We also bring speakers in to speak about it.

I looked at SIDS (also called cot death or crib death) around the world and found that New Zealand had the highest incidence while Asia, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland have fewer cases.  In the Netherlands in 1971, two pediatricians at a conference presented the benefits of prone sleeping positions for babies.  Mothers then switched from their traditional habit of putting babies to sleep on their backs and by 1986 the cot death rate (which had been very low) had tripled.  Yet it was the Netherlands that started the first 'back to sleep' campaign in 1989, and their Sudden Infant Death rate fell by 40 percent.

In New Zealand some research suggests that the reason for cot death is extremely toxic nerve gases that form a certain fungi that gets into the mattress.  Other researchers dispute this view, however, after they implimented matress wrapping where a thin plastic coating is wrapped around the matress, rates have fallen 48 percent.  In conclusion, it appears that there are many views out there about the causes but nothing definite.  I say if what other countries are doing is working to lower incidence then keep doing it.