Click Here to Read: Taking Play Seriously by Robin Marantz Henig on February 17th in the New York Times Magazine
Letter to Editor
NYT Magazine
Your February 17, 2008 article, “Taking Play Seriously,” is a very comprehensive discussion of the importance of play in human development. One area, however, was missing: The importance of recognizing that for children play has meaning.
Following the World Trade Center disaster, for example, we saw many children build towers and repetitively knock them down, and, at times, crash airplanes into them. As with adults, children reacted to the trauma in their own personal way. Play allowed them to assimilate the event and master its potential traumatic effects.
By observing young children play over a period of time, one may recognize patterns, repetitions, and play disruptions. Repetitive themes and/or moments of disruptions in the play, in particular, provide clues to those emotional issues which children are trying to cope with and master.
Leon Hoffman
Director
Pacella Parent Child Center
http://www.theparentchildcenter.org/
Leon Hoffman, MD
Director, Pacella Parent Child Center of
The NY Psychoanalytic Institute & Society
167 East 67th Street
NY NY 10065
212.249.1163
917.767.6575
73542.334@compuserve.com
http://www.theparentchildcenter.org/