Ripples of Resilience

Episode 12: Play Heals: Why Fun Builds Resilience

• Jana Marie Foundation • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Feeling stretched by schedules, screens, and stress? We’re unpacking why play is not a luxury but a lifeline—one of the most effective ways to build emotional resilience, strengthen learning, and deepen family bonds. With clinical child psychologist and mindfulness teacher Dr. Peter Montminy, we define real play as self-directed, intrinsically joyful activity that switches the nervous system from fight-or-flight into safety, curiosity, and connection. From Cub Scout field adventures to living room creative messes, we explore how open-ended discovery helps kids test limits, resolve conflict, and grow both IQ and EQ, while giving adults a reliable reset that fuels focus and calm.

We share a practical blueprint for making space for play in real life. Think of your week as a social-emotional diet: a balance of solo and social play, active movement and quiet creation, structured games and unstructured exploration, offline moments and intentional online time. You’ll learn why scheduling play like a wellness visit works, how child-directed special playtime strengthens parent-child attachment, and simple tools - phone reminders, post-its, accountability buddies—to protect these small but powerful rituals. We also dig into mindset: how to turn chores into flow, spot early signs you need more play (tension, irritability, shutdown), and use morning intentions plus evening reflections to grow what you want more of.

To make it easy, we close with the Ripple Challenge: choose one playful moment each day. Sing in the car, build a tiny fort, doodle without judgment, or wander outside and notice the sky. Joy isn’t extra credit, it’s the engine for growth. If this conversation helps you breathe a little easier and try something light today, share it with a friend, subscribe for more conversations that build resilience, and leave a quick review to help others find the show. What playful moment will you choose next?

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 for immediate support.

This podcast is brought to you by Jana Marie Foundation and A Mindful Village.

Jana Marie Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization located in State College, Pennsylvania which harnesses the power of creative expression and dialogue to spark conversations build connections, and promote mental health and wellbeing among young people and their communities. Learn more at Jana Marie Foundation.

A Mindful Village is Dr. Peter Montminy's private consulting practice dedicated to improving the mental health of kids and their caregivers. Learn more at A Mindful Village | Holistic Mental Health Care for Kids.

Music created by Ken Baxter.

(c) 2025. Jana Marie Foundation. All Rights Reserved.

This podcast was developed in part under a grant number SM090046 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The views, policies, and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of SAMHSA, HHS or the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation:

Welcome to the Ripples of Resilience podcast by Jana Marie Foundation, where we explore practical ways to support young minds and foster emotional resilience. I'm your host, Marisa Vicere, president and founder of the Jana Marie Foundation. Today we're diving into a topic that's joyful, meaningful, and maybe even a little unexpected. The power of play. In a world that often feels heavy, play reminds us that laughter, curiosity, and imagination can open the door to healing and connection. And joining me today is our resident expert, Dr. Peter Montminy, a clinical child psychologist, certified mindfulness teacher, and parenting coach from A Mindful Village. Welcome, Dr. Montminy.

Dr. Peter Montminy, A Mindful Village:

Thank you, Marisa. Glad to be here and excited to be here today for one of my favorite topics: play, often overlooked but important aspect of mental health and resilience.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation:

Thank you. I am so excited for this topic because it is something that's near and dear to all of us, but it's sometimes hard to find that time to add it into our life. So let's just start from the beginning. What do we mean by play?

Dr. Peter Montminy, A Mindful Village:

Well, the play we're talking about that is so precious and vital to our children's development is play that we just do for enjoyment. Big part of quality of play is that there's no end goal to produce, achieve anything. It's doing an activity for the activity's sake, for the pleasure of it, really. So sometimes we call it real play. There's a lot of good writings for Ken Robinson and Education, Dr. Stuart Brown in mental health, that talks about the power and importance of play in child development. And we talk about play really being more a state of mind than any specific activity. It's the idea that I'm showing up to just enjoy this experience and to enjoy it in a way that's fun. That usually involves being self-directed and self-controlled. So it's not about meeting others' expectations or rules. Now we'll get into it in a minute, talking about playing rule, you know, based tabletop games or things. So we're really talking about more creative, expressive, free play. It doesn't mean that board games aren't an important aspect of play as well. They are. We really want to look for, especially our children, our children of all ages, opportunities where they can have quiet space and freedom to just explore, create, tinker, fool around with something that feels good to them. It's really more self-directed discovery, is what we're talking about.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation:

Perfect. One of the roles I get to do in our community is to be a den leader for an amazing Cub Scout pack. And one of our favorite things to do is just go outside and let them explore. And it's amazing to see the creativity that can happen in those moments. They build huts and they build little houses for animals and all sorts of things. And it's really just giving them that freedom to be in that moment with whatever happens to be around them.

Dr. Peter Montminy, A Mindful Village:

Yeah, beautiful. And you know, and this is kids of varying ages, even in today's digital age, where another day we're going to tackle the topic of screen time struggles head on. But you think, well, my kid just wants to always be on their iPad or whatever. No, when we choose and create the space and encourage the space for kids to go out and do that, it's still there. It is a basic human drive, a basic social mammal drive, actually. If you see little kits, foxes, or bear cubs rolling around out in the in the fields, right? This is a this is a human and even beyond human basic need. So kids still thrive on that when you create the spaces for it to happen. So I'm thrilled to hear you do that as part of your Cub Scout protocols.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation:

And I love that you mentioned that this is so important for kids, but it even goes beyond that. So even as adults, we still need to be finding that intentional time to just be in those moments and allow our own play to come out.

Dr. Peter Montminy, A Mindful Village:

100%. It's it's vital for kids of all ages, as I like to say. And we are all kids of different ages. And the idea of doing something just for fun is vital for our mental health, our physical health, our problem-solving abilities, our productivity. If you're thinking, I don't have time for that because I have to, have to, have to achieve, achieve, achieve. Pause, breathe. You can subsume play as a vital prerequisite to you even being more productive or on your game. Basically, just being your better self, right? We know this. We know that when we relax and do something fun, we feel better and we're more closer to that ideal person we want to be, right? If not perfectly. So anyway, vital for kids of all ages, absolutely.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation:

So this is like a reset button for our minds and our bodies. I think sometimes we all need that reminder that something as simple as laughing or doing something lighthearted actually supports resilience. So I'm curious from your expertise, how does play actually support emotional well-being and resilience on a deeper level?

Dr. Peter Montminy, A Mindful Village:

Yeah, it really does develop both IQ and EQ. It's vital for developing intelligence, problem solving, as well as emotional balance, emotional relationships, social relationships. There's not an aspect of our functioning that play isn't vital. And for kids in particular, it gives them a space to try out, to understand the world, to try out and experiment with what works and doesn't work. Where are my limits? Where's it Alchy, physically or socially? Where do I run up against a limit or an ulch moment, if you will? Kids need to be free to discover and explore this, to find out what works and doesn't work for them, how to be in social relationships, how to solve cognitive problems. It literally develops every aspect of the brain. It's really about exploring the environment with curiosity and joy. And that only happens when we're not, you know, we talk a lot about the stress mode of fight, flight, or freeze. This is the flip side of that coin. This is being in social engagement mode, feeling safe enough to explore your environment. Again, a primal human need. And to go out there and explore and create, to attend and befriend the opposite of fight or flight, to stay in play. It's reinforcing, it develops creative and critical thinking skills, it develops, as I said, problem-solving skills. It develops our ability, our kids' ability to cooperate and collaborate with others and to resolve conflicts. If we have everything programmed for we're going to do this activity that I've picked out and adult guided all the time, those are good in moments. But if we do that all the time, we don't give kids the room, again, to get Alchie, as I'm calling it today, to explore with one another and with themselves, this discovery of what works, what doesn't, with myself, with others. We're robbing them the ability to develop their intellect and their emotional intelligence as well.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation:

There's sports, there's the homework that needs to be done after school, there's friend time, and then there's technology that's coming at them all the time. So, how do we make those intentional moments to be able to have that time and that space to really just explore the environments that they're in? Yeah.

Dr. Peter Montminy, A Mindful Village:

The first step, I think, is to believe the why, right? We're just saying how it really improves child development and adult functioning in all these cognitive and social emotional ways. Do you believe that's true? Does that feel true in your bones? And if it does, and you connect with the why we would bother prioritizing the space, time, and space for play. Now you have the motivation, you have the reason to step into and do the practical how-tos. But first it's asking yourself, why would I want my child to play more? Why would I want to play more? It feels good and it turns on the positive and you know, endorphins in our nervous system and lowers the stress, stress, excuse me, thresholds. So if we remind ourselves of the big why here, and then we prioritize. Or we don't, right? So our mindfulness approach to everything is mindfulness is really about intentional attention. So we really want to be good about setting our intentions for this, and I'll talk more about that in a minute. We want to think of some practical ways to deal with it, but I don't have enough time. So a few other practical tips for that one. Think about the social emotional diet. You think about the food plate or used to be the pyramid down to the plate, and you think I want a well-rounded nutritional diet for my child's physical health. Think about a well-rounded social emotional diet for our children's mental health, right? And that means, yeah, sometimes there's work time, sometimes there's play time. Sometimes that play is solo and you need some quiet time to yourself. Sometimes it's social. Play with your siblings, your peers. Sometimes it's a family-oriented playtime. Sometimes it's active, sometimes it's quiet. So picture a pie chart of what you think the important values are aspects of play for your child, their temperament, their stage of development. Think about how much active or quiet playtime. Look for some solo and some social interactive playtime. Look for some structured game-like activities. Great. And look for some unstructured time where they have the space to need to develop. It can even, yes, be online time as well as offline time. But are you intentionally, mindfully choosing what does that online time look like, both in quality and quantity? Again, more on that another day. So creating then the motivation, breaking down this idea of a pie chart of what's what's most important for what type of play activities I want my child to have. And then commuting, scheduling the time and place to do it. Simply put, you can think, look, I'm scheduling the time to listen to this podcast. I scheduled the time for a doctor's appointment for my child. Schedule, these are doctor's appointments. These are wellness visits where you don't have to get in a car and you don't have to pay, you know, a copay. You can just have a wellness visit at home. Schedule it as phone alarms, notifications, put it on the family calendar. Consciously create the space to then step into the playtime. For your kiddo, special playtime with them, when you join them, have it be child directed. And not a lot of questions, just following their lead, joining and playing with them. Set aside a play date with your child once or twice a week, whatever you can do. This child-directed playtime is shown to really have positive benefits of building a positive bond in the parent-child relationship that you can draw on for times of conflict or struggle at another time. And last thing I'll say, all the little practical tips for how to actually do it and create these habits, right? Let me just ask you, what are three things you enjoy doing? Listeners out there, just go ahead, really write it down right now. What are three things you enjoy doing without overthinking it that you know when you do this, you're you feel more relaxed, you feel more rejuvenated. What are rejuvenating activities for you? And we're not talking about big expensive trips to Tahiti, that might be, you know, but we're talking about practically in a given week around my current life. What are some things I know when I do these, I enjoy them? And then this doctor's prescription is do more of that. Schedule three of those appointments in your week this week. Well, I don't have the time. You have 168 hours in your week, minus three for pure play and enjoyment, still leaves 165 for everything else to get done. You're gonna be okay. Do it.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation:

I love that. And it's such a great visual to think about the plate and how we spend all this time building out healthy lifestyles when we think about our physical health and the food that we're eating and what we're bringing into the home. Having that same visual for our social well-being is equally as important, if not more important. And I love that it's not adding to our plate. It's not more things that we have to bring in. It's really doing what we're already doing and then also having that playful mindset when we are approaching the activities. So being in that present moment with them and really finding joy in those things that we're doing. For me, I love baking and sometimes it turns it more into that chore. But if I remember to like, this is something I really enjoy doing, and it's okay to have the time just to bake and not have to clean the house at the same time or do the laundry or whatever else, then it can really bring back those moments of peace and grounding and resetting for myself.

Dr. Peter Montminy, A Mindful Village:

It's it's so key. It comes back to what we said at the very beginning. Play isn't necessarily an activity, it's a state of mind. And you just said it again, it's the mindset. Baking can be a chore or bacon can be play. It's how we are being present to it. So 100% right. Yeah, love it.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation:

From your perspective, what are some signs that someone might benefit from incorporating more play or lightness into their routine?

Dr. Peter Montminy, A Mindful Village:

Yeah. Well, we just kind of take our stress temperature, right? A little stress meter index right now, or in your typical day or your typical week, right? You know, how often are you finding your muscles tense or your attitude or muscles, body rigid? How long often are you feeling drained, overwhelmed, maybe bored? Your kids are gonna say they're bored. Yeah, we need to cultivate their capacity to find curiosity and discovery in that space of not anything being prescribed to them. We're over-prescribing activities to kids. Let's back off, give them some space to refamiliarize yourself, themselves with how to be playful. But whether it's you or your child, is there too much tension, feeling drained? Is it too much arguing or avoiding? That's what fight or flight looks like on a daily basis, snapping quicker than we used, we care to, procrastinating, or are you or your child freezing, shutting down, kind of slogging through, maybe at best? A lot of us feel overtaxed and stressed, and those sound like familiar symptoms. If it does, favorite prescription, let's play more. It's not frivolous, it's not superfluous, it's not even optional, it's vital to our well-being.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation:

Such important signs. And I know there are times where we all feel that way. And I can think of times where I was feeling overwhelmed, feeling that compassion fatigue that can come from work, from home life, from everything that is out there. And then when you take that time just to get back to the things that you enjoy doing, it really does change your entire mood. It re-energizes you, helps you fill that cup so that you can then pour into the other aspects of your life.

Dr. Peter Montminy, A Mindful Village:

Yeah.

unknown:

Yeah.

Dr. Peter Montminy, A Mindful Village:

When we say we don't have time, let's pause, breathe, and reset our intention. What's our highest intention? To be joyful, to appreciate and be happy our life. Play gives us that possibility.

unknown:

Yeah.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation:

Thank you. One thing we mentioned is that it's all about balance. Play really becomes a powerful grounding tool, reminding us that we're all human and that joy and laughter are part of building that resilience. How can we be more intentional about making space for these moments in our everyday life?

Dr. Peter Montminy, A Mindful Village:

Pause. Our very first episode, the power of the pot. Pause, breathe, choose. Mindfulness again is about intentional attention. So let's just be mindful about what's my highest intention for today for my child or for myself. What's my highest intention for this hour? What's my highest intention for this moment right now? We're not pretending that every moment of your day can be pure play. We are saying if I have the intention to be healthier or happier today, if I have the intention to get along better with my child and have more family fun and less family fighting, then where am I scheduling and committing to a part of my day, 10 minutes, an hour if you have it, two minutes, for me to step into the mindset of let's create some space for play and for fun. So it's really about setting that intention first. I often encourage people, and I practice this in my life most days, progress, not perfection, with a morning intention. You know, set your morning intention and then an evening reflection. And then that can be paired up with either just go around at the dinner table or bedtime with your kid and let's reflect on where was a fun, playful moment you had today. Even if we didn't have a scheduled play date, where was a fun, playful moment you had today? Reflect on it. Journaling about it. Let me write down three things I really enjoyed or appreciated about my day-to-day, right? And start the next morning with the intention to step into more of those moments. If you get in the habit of setting a morning intention and doing an evening reflection, you start looking for the good, looking for the fun, looking for the play, and growing it, right? What you focus on, remember, what you focus on grows. So we set the intention, we do some little practical rituals, perhaps, including again committing to building that habit with post-it notes, phone reminders, an accountability buddy, journaling, and you slowly grow the habit.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation:

Perfect. So I think it's about that time for our Ripple Challenge. So this week we invite you to find one playful moment in your day. Maybe it's singing in the car, playing a quick game with your kids, or just letting yourself laugh without holding back. I know here at Jana Marie Foundation, we use a lot of creative expression, and that's definitely my go-to play strategy is getting lost in the artwork, getting those emotions out, and allowing myself just to create, not to necessarily worry about the outcome, but just have fun in the creation of it. So, how about you, Dr. Montminy? Any thoughts on what you might focus on throughout the week?

Dr. Peter Montminy, A Mindful Village:

Yeah, what grows the flow state for me, and you're talking about in your artistic creations, you're in the flow, you're in the moment. It's not to achieve some specific outcome, it's to enjoy the experience. That's being in the flow state, as we call it. So I say, how can we grow the flow? And for me, humming, singing, laughing, I just purposely like to kind of sometimes I even tense up, and then I just laugh at myself for being tense and just create, cultivate this habit of mind. And then in particular, going for walks out in nature. So I love having my little playtime out in nature and taking in all the seasons and the weather and the creatures and the air and the changes and the consistency of a walk in the woods. I love it all so much. And I do that several times a week. And then go have fun with my wife and my grandkids playing. We had our preschool grandkids sleeping over this weekend, and it was all about creative play on the floor with dolls and blocks and whatever else. So uh enjoying those moments where we can.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation:

Love it. So many great ideas there. And we'd love to hear what you're doing as well. So share your playful moments using hashtag Ripples of Resilience or tag Jana Marie Foundation on social media. Thank you, Dr. Montminy, for again sitting down with us and looking for ways we can continue to grow resilience in the lives of young people. In our next episode, we'll learn about the mindful solutions method. Kids and teens today are often struggling with distracted minds, distressed emotions, and disruptive behaviors. Dr. Montminy's Mindful Solutions approach helps struggling youth develop self-regulation skills by fostering effective co-regulation relationships with their caregivers. What a great way to start off season two next month. Looking forward to seeing you all again then. This podcast is brought to you by Jana Marie Foundation, where we're dedicated to opening minds and saving lives through conversations that matter. And by A Mindful Village, where Dr. Peter Montminy provides holistic mental health care for kids and their caregivers. Together, let's keep showing up, speaking up, and supporting the young minds who need us most. Remember, even the smallest actions can create waves of change.