Play is the basis of human communication. Our first interactions are pure play. This is where the first mental organizations begin to develop: planning, cause-effect, object permanence, recognition of others, motivation, participation, and all within the framework of the most motivating experience that organizes our attention, concentration, and memory.
Our mothers teach us how to play, but they teach us much more than that. They teach us how to develop strategies for recognizing others, our surroundings, and self-knowledge. They show us life with emotion, sweetness, and passion, as if the keys to human existence, the magnificence of living and being alive, are hidden in every gesture, glance, and object.
As we grow, what we call evolution, this playful, sensorial, and communicative sensation dissipates; everything becomes more mechanical, colder, and more artificial. Perhaps it's a natural process, but when it comes to education and analyzing educational strategies, whether in the family or therapeutic setting, we must pause at this essential point. In the first steps, during which the amazing capacity for learning is developed in babies, in stages rich in human contact, sensorimotor stimulation, spontaneous emotional strength, and the security linked to our parents.
Why do we stop playing? Why do we find it hard to surprise and be surprised? Will we stop trying to give the best to our children without knowing how to receive what they give us through play? They hold the key to their needs, to what they require at any given moment. We look outward without looking inward, and that's what we do with our children. We look at their environment, worrying that they have tons of toys and stimulation, but we don't look at their interior, at what their body, their hands, their expressions say. We live with our doors turned outward and don't cultivate our interior. We're talking about quality moments; we don't have to have many experiences; we have to live them, and the first ones who must go through that process are us as parents, mothers, professionals, teachers... What doesn't motivate us, we can't use to motivate others. Sometimes we have to sit next to our children and listen, observe, listen, and observe again because they are the true masters. They have what we've lost over the years: the magic of knowing how to live every second with true intensity so that it has meaning and endures. They are the masters, and we are simply masters who became apprentices because they forgot to play, watch, read, listen, understand, empathize... these are the true learnings, the basis for later personal and, consequently, social success. Security, self-esteem, self-control... are the fruit of these processes.
When we educate in these early stages after the difficult months of parenting, it seems like a phase begins in which our child responds, looks at us, pays attention to us, and seems like an open book waiting for us to write the first chapters, where everything boils down to continuing to attend to sleep, hunger, crying, and cleanliness. Then, conflicts, self-determination, possessiveness, and crises begin, and instead of employing the same playful communication we had in the first months, we shift roles and begin to distance ourselves from our little ones. From this new position, from such a distance from communication in these early phases, where we test the first tools of social and personal management, we stand in indignation that our children do not remain eternally within our circle of control and begin to behave as people with their own thoughts, wills, and preferences, even if they are simple but not straightforward.
Human beings and parents—we are a different species of human being—a sea of conflicts and tides, playing with their rises and falls, trying to keep our crew positioned and alert so as not to sink. So, as a piece of advice, I'll tell you... play, play, and try to play every day. The greater the difficulty, the greater the need to continue attracting the attention of your children, students, and patients so you can guide them to a place where they can see situations from another perspective without becoming blocked and without the loneliness that comes from managing our environment, others, and, above all, ourselves.
Cristina Oroz Bajo