Ep16 Play and can it be learnt?

Podcast Description:

This week, we are pondering the fascinating world of play—specifically, can play be learned? Over the past few weeks and months of recording, we've been reflecting on how play happens with children, babies and adults. We’ll start by looking at the early stages of life—how even before birth, the unborn child begins to interact with the world around them. From there, we'll explore how play unfolds in early childhood and how, as we grow, we may discover new ways to play and embrace a playful mindset. This is from our own perspective not as experts but as adults who enjoy play both in our personal and professional.

We’ll also ask if play is something we can relearn later in life. Can we rediscover playful ways of being in the world and develop new play skills, or is it something we experience through lived moments with others? Is play something that’s taught, or is it more of an embodied experience we share and pass on to others?

Join us as we unpack the beginnings of play and whether it’s something we can learn or simply experience as we move through life.

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Transcript

This transcript is generated during the editing process, and unfortunately, we don't have time to correct the errors within it. 

Episode 22 Play and Can it be learnt

Philippa: [00:00:00] Welcome to this week's episode of Pondering Play and Therapy with me, Philippa, 

Julie: and me Julie. This week our episode is on play and can it be learnt, and we've been thinking a lot about this over the last few weeks and months of doing the podcast. Is actually how does play ever come about in a human being?

And we've been thinking about how in a baby, even before birth with the unborn child, how we start in life, beginning to interact with the world around us. And then we are gonna be thinking about how play might be learn, and as I'm saying, learnt, I'm putting it in inverted commas, play might be, or experience for the first time, and then developed and explored how that [00:01:00] happens when we're youngsters.

But then thinking about later on in life, is it possible to relearn play to. Find new play, playful ways of being in the world, learning new play skills. Is it something that can be taught or is it something more that is a lived experience? It's an embodied learning where we experience it with somebody else and then we can almost pass it on to do it with somebody else, because we've actually had the lived experience of it.

So yeah, Philippa, let's start with babies. Let's start say the first year of life, what's going on for a baby that we could say was the beginning of learning how to play. And we are using the word learn not in a sort of educational sit down. I'm [00:02:00] learn to do something, but begin to. That we call play. Tell us your thoughts 

Philippa: I was thinking just, which I hadn't thought about in the kind of 40 minutes before we add this, but there's a quote by Fred Rogers who is that TV star, and you often see it on social media and it says, play is the language of children. And when you were talking then that was actually what I was thinking about was that play is the way that we communicate with, a baby in the womb. As they start to move and they push their fist out of the. Of the tummy, you might grasp it or tap it, or there's music and the parent dances.

You might sing to the baby in utero. There's a [00:03:00] connection that's. Not play as in playing with toys, but there's a playfulness that's communicating to this baby, this tiny thing that actually somebody's connected with you. We can see you, we can hear you. We are developing with you. And that continues when babies are born, we rock them and we are rocking them to soothe them, but it's playful. You sing to them you might blow raspberries on their neck or, show them a rattle or, stick your tongue out at them. All those are playful things. And so that is play, and I wonder if we need to come onto this later in the episode, but that happens when you are in an environment that's consistent, predictable, nurturing, safe and responsive, [00:04:00] and therefore, as a baby, as a toddler, you will start to respond back to this consistent, predictable caregiving adult, and therefore that attunement allows you to play. But I guess if you haven't got that consistent, predictable, nurturing, caring, then maybe instinctually you want to connect and play is, or playfulness is the way that you connect. But if you haven't got something coming back that's saying yes that is the way that I'm gonna communicate with you.

I am gonna stick my tongue out. I am gonna, touch your fingers when you raise your hand up that you will stop doing it. Then, so you might instinctually communicate through [00:05:00] play or playfulness, but if it's not reciprocated, then actually it doesn't go any further than that. 

Julie: Yeah that's what I was thinking very much about who starts a play conversation, even with a toddler with a baby in neutral who starts. And I don't know if you've had this experience in your training, but I had the experience of observing a baby for a year, a newborn baby who was three weeks old when I first met him, and I observed him for a whole. Going to see the family once a week for an hour where I observed without taking notes and without looking for something. I simply, and I say simply, it was really tough some days. Sat and observed and took in what was happening in that family, and it was a family that had this newborn baby, an 18 month old and a 3-year-old.

[00:06:00] So there was a lot going on in this family. And one of the things we used to talk about in our seminars, so we'd come back to the training course and every couple of weeks you would present your case. You would read out your notes, the things that you'd written up afterwards. And then we'd be curious about what was going on. And I remember one of the things that we often talked about is who started the interaction? Was it mom that had gone to the baby and done something? As you said shaken a rattle gone blue made a funny face twiddled with the baby's feet. Was it the mum that had initiated something and then the baby was responding?

Or was it that the baby was sometimes initiating something and the mom responded? And in fact, in this family, it was often the toddler and the 3-year-old. Who would go and start something and then the [00:07:00] baby would interact and then you could see the joy on this three-year-old when her brother clued back at her after she had smiled or gone to her.

She used to do these little gentle booth and her absolute thrill that she had enacted this reaction from her new baby brother. So for me that's always been a question who starts it? Where does the conversation start? Is it the baby or the young one initiating something with the adult or the older around them?

Or is it the adult initiating something with the baby? And does that matter? I suppose it's, you talk, I know a lot about the feedback loop and maybe in a while you can tell us a bit more about that, but that sense of, it's a continuous circle of I do this, you do this, I do this, you do this, and how [00:08:00] that begins to build that sense of who I am in the world.

Ah, if I do that, ah, that happens. And it might be playfulness with a person, or it might be playfulness with my own body. We watch young babies and toddlers really explore what they can do with their bodies. They begin to realize, oh, if I stretch my hand there, I can grab something. Ah, oh. If I push that.

It moves, wow. How I can impact the world and how the world can impact me. And if I make this sound to my three-year-old sister, she comes and does something back. Ah. So it is a beginning of that sense of self, that sense that I'm me and your you [00:09:00] and the world is the world and the objects of the objects, and I end here and they begin there and I begin to build up this sense of who I am through interaction, through that connection and exploration.

So I'm wondering even you.

Can we exist? Can we have a sense of who we are? 

Philippa: And there's just one more thing before we just get into that really deep discussion about self. I think the other thing that play does is it gives your body the foundation to play. Because without it, your body doesn't develop in the way it does. I think we've talked before about our body developing from the top down and that the first thing you do is you develop head, neck, and shoulder strength.

And one of the ways that happens is the baby's carried around. But the other one is that babies are put on their [00:10:00] tummy so that they can start to lift their head up. Now again, often parents or whoever's looking after the baby are put things for the baby to look at or to see, to encourage them to do that.

And then they start to lift their head up and then they start to roll over and again, they you put a toy just out of their reach, don't you? They start to stretch and then they do that rolling over. They do the pushing up with their hands, so they're lifting their shoulder, building their shoulder strength. And so actually play build their early sensory motor systems in order that they actually bodily have the ability to play and crawling. There's a woman called Sarah Lloyd who does building underdeveloped sensory systems, and she would say, crawling is your superpower. [00:11:00] Because it makes you lift your head up. It builds your so shoulder strength, but you're also putting weight through your hands, which is opening up the bones and the muscles and strengthening them. So you can actually hold a knife and fork. You can hold a pencil, you can hold a collaring, be without being able to. Do crawling or moving or building your body through play. You just can't do any of those things. You just, it's impossible for children to sit and at a desk. So when we talk about school ready and we want them to be school ready, they need to have played. And played substantially in order to be school ready.

Because if you haven't developed this head, neck, shoulder and girdle strength, then you can't sit at a desk. So you are gonna be fidgety. You're gonna be falling off your chair, you're gonna be standing around. You can't hold a pencil, you can't look at the teacher, [00:12:00] you can't come downstairs. You can't stand in a line.

You can't carry your tray with all your things on, so actually. I know we are gonna talk about the sense of self, but just closing your body from that very moment that you're born and being carried. And played with in that way and encouraged, and, all those sorts of things is super, super important because you can get to 14 then, and you can't sit in an exam room when you are doing your marks for your GCSEs because you didn't get tummy time when you were six weeks old.

And that, that's a huge thing, and then you can go back and fill all the, these gaps in. But again, it's play that you do it with. You playfully engage to help children, teenagers then have tummy time, then do crawling, then helping their tactile system, baby massage that is building a tactile system.

And that is play blowing. The [00:13:00] raspberries that we do on the, like you were talking about that 3-year-old blowing to her. A baby brother and a baby brother's copying, but he's moving his mouth Yeah. To develop his oral strength. Do you know what I mean? It's yeah. It's massive. All this stuff that if we don't do it fundamentally changes how we develop and then what we can do in later life. 

Julie: Yeah, so thinking there about we need the tools to be able to communicate, to play, to work, to travel, to eat, to talk. We need a body that has the muscles and the coordination to be able to do relationship ultimately.

Yeah. And to, yeah, all of that sort of blowing bubbles and making raspberry sounds and cooing. It's all building up those huge muscles around the jaw and the lips [00:14:00] that are ultimately going to be the muscles that help us to speak and to help us to chew. And the more we get to chew, the more we get to be able to articulate and speak.

Philippa: Absolutely, 

Julie: You and I will have worked with families and children who for many reasons haven't had the opportunity to have solid food. Sometimes I meet a three, 4-year-old who can only manage liquids and very mushy food. And sometimes that's because of a medical reason sometimes that's because of neglect sometimes that's because of unavailability of foods that the child has needed, but without that capacity to chew, have a RUS in your mouth really munched down on a crunchy biscuit. Then you are not developing the jaw muscles and the facial muscles to be able to then speak so often those children that I've met who've [00:15:00] had that deprivation, no. No matter how it's being caused, really struggle to speak. And at three, four, if you are not able to form words. Then you can't communicate with your potential friends in the nursery or even at home. You might be able to form the words in your mind because you've heard them, so you think you're saying them, but simply, your muscles around your jaw are just not ready for it yet.

Philippa: That's it. And then if you couple that with, maybe they don't have any neck and shoulder girdle strength, so therefore they dunno where their hands are or that pressure and forced off. And then they play tig or rough and tumble with their peers, which is age appropriate. But they do it a little bit too rough, and they do it a little bit too hard because they actually can't control how much pressure and force they're putting through something or they break a toy.

You can see [00:16:00] how slowly a little person's self-worth starts to diminish and starts to e away about people aren't talking to me. I'm always getting told off when I'm playing, I can't hold my pencil well enough. I'm getting told off 'cause I'm breaking the toys or my parents are always telling me off because I'm not using my spoon.

But I can't use my spoon and everybody else can. 'cause we only know what our body is like. And if you can see that other children are using spoons or knives and forks, but you can't, and you still use your fingers and everybody's telling you off for using your fingers, then that's gonna slowly erode away, around how you see yourself. Nevermind. Coupled to, I think going back to what you, the question you asked before, I got into the body stuff was around. If you are making these attempts to connect with your adult as a baby, as a toddler. So maybe you are blowing those [00:17:00] raspberries or you are smiling when they're walking past or you are putting your arms up and people just walk past you or don't blow the raspberries back, or you don't see an adult from one hour to the next. You're just left with some toys in a playpen or a cot, or you are left in a push chair watching the tv and what you learn is from pepper pig or the night garden and you don't have people doing that back and forth, or that serving return is the, is a child development center call it then that also is going to, to one, feel lonely and very stressful. But also you're not getting that really nice communication that says you are worthy, you are lovable, you are delighted in that you can trust the adults in your world that they are gonna meet your needs. And [00:18:00] that is just horrendous

Julie: so what we are thinking about there is with play, the body really develops the muscles, the core of the body, and that gives us access to more play and more relationship, but also that playful interaction if it's going reasonably well most of the time, and it's never going brilliantly all the time, but reasonably well most of the time.

Then it also as well as building up our physical muscles, play is really absolutely essential in our development to build our sense of who we are in the world, that we are worthy, and thinking about what is my self image? How do I see myself in the world and I see myself in the world through how other people enjoy me or don't enjoy me.

The feedback that I get, so without play, our emotional [00:19:00] muscles are not developed as well as our physical muscles. Yeah. 

Philippa: So your question at the beginning was, can we learn, play well? I wonder, if you are already prewired to play in that inverted comma thing, because that is. The language that is the way that we connect so that we can, as babies very early on, elicit a response from our adults, and that is playful because we don't have words. We don't have say, oh, I'm hungry. We, I know we cry, but we also learn to smile really quickly. We can do that playful interaction. So we maybe have got an innate ability to do it, but what we need is that to be responded to and if we it isn't responded to, then [00:20:00] very quickly that ability disappears. 

Julie: Yeah.

We know that in that, I dunno if you've come across where they invite a parent and a child who know each other well and things normally go well between them to be say in a room together and playing as they would normally play. Then they instruct the parent to look away and then look back with a really flat face, not to look at the child, just to stare over the child's head for two minutes and you'll see lots of these are on the internet there's a wonderful one with dads. And these dads look away and look back at their toddler that they've been playing with so brilliantly for the last few minutes. And then. That the child does to try and get the dad back. They're like, come on [00:21:00] and they bang on the table. They shake their rattle or the whatever they've been playing with. They squeal, they look cute, they smile, they sing. They're doing everything they can possibly do to get this dad back, but their dad has just suddenly gone flat. And then within a minute the baby collapses, physically collapses, their body just slumps, and they look away.

They give up, they flop. They cry, they just lose everything about themselves. Their body and their psyche seems to absolutely just melt. And then the parent, the dad in this situation is instructed to now look back at your baby and reengage and then woo so quickly these dads and these babies do get it back [00:22:00] again.

And you can feel well when I watch that, and I've watched it many times. That one with the dads the relief I feel. And if that's me feeling the relief watching the video of that, what relief must that baby have felt when, oh, I've got my dad back. A real demonstration of how quickly a baby collapses or a toddler collapses when the parent is even for two minutes absent, but also how quickly they can repair that and get back together again. 

Philippa: I think that's called the still face experiment. I was in the dentist the other week and there was this most beautiful little girl in there. She was about. Three and a half, four, I would say. And she was with her mom and her dad. Her dad was sitting on one side and her mom and her were on some chairs. She was standing up and her mom was sitting down and she was drawing on some paper, and her mom was looking at her mobile [00:23:00] phone and scrolling through her mobile phone and this little girl was drawing and then she. Lifted the picture up to show mom and she lifted it up and show mom, but mom didn't notice that she had and she carried, so mom just carried on looking at her phone, and then this little girl put the paper down and drew a bit more.

And then, she lifted it up and showed mom again, and mom didn't notice. She carried on scrolling through her phone and then she put it down and then she took, this mom had got another paper that you have to fill in when you go to the dentist in her hand, and so the little girl pulled it out of mom's hand and mom just let it go.

Still looking at her phone, and then this little girl started to draw on this. Form that you have to fill in. And mom then noticed and told her off oh no. You can't do that. You can't do that. And took it back. And this little girl is just quite confused by it. And then mom started to scroll through the phone. [00:24:00] In fairness, dad, I think then noticed and took the little girl to play on some toys. But when I was watching it, that's what I was thinking about was the still face experiment. Because myself, I've watched it loads of times and I was just thinking. This parent, clearly loves this little girl, and this little girl is clearly attached to this parent.

But she had learned to maybe offer mum some kind of play or some kind of connection, but when mom didn't respond, she just carried on her own and that. It was quite sad, I have to say, because she needed mom to say That's a great, yeah, that's a great picture. 

Julie: I suppose what I'm sitting here thinking is, but is that not just part of the reality of life? Sometimes a parent can notice stuff and [00:25:00] sometimes they can't but in that face experiment with the dads is that they were able to recover very quickly from the time when dad was absent and we know as parents, carers, people who are around young children. That we cannot physically be, engaged with them all the time because there are things of life to be getting on with. Yeah, I, and I suppose, you, you saw that little snippet in the dentist. But the little girl didn't collapse.

She'd found some ways of managing on her own, and then another parent came along and, mom might have been filling in something or doing, looking at something that was, absolutely vital that she did that. And I suppose it's thinking about, overall in the week. Is there some playful interaction?

[00:26:00] Is there a to and fro? Is there a general feel of if I offer something it will get, responded to? 

Philippa: Yeah, I suppose what made me sad was that it felt to me that she just accepted that mum was gonna carry on looking at her phone. She. Do you know what I mean? She didn't persist. She didn't put the paper on top of the phone. She did it she showed it and tried to engage Mom. Mom didn't, and then she just carried on it. And this isn't a judgment of mom because maybe that was the only five minutes that she gets from this little kid. I absolutely understand that. And I, again, 100% there will be times, in my parenting, probably most days where I just needed some head space.

It's not I I suppose [00:27:00] it's about phones and these technologies that actually you even watching parents walk to school and their child is chatting to them and they're scrolling on the phone and I suppose it's that, it's about. We are missing those moments. And there's the research now coming out isn't there about actually children, I think, I don't know. There was somebody I interviewed that'll be coming out later on, who was saying that some of the research that, that they'd read, children were saying to their parents, do you love me as much as you love my phone? As much as you love your phone, and it's that thing of that if we are not noticing those moments enough of the time, then what happens?

And that it isn't just about phones it might be, yeah. It's about lots of things. Yeah. It might be, poor mental health. It might be that you [00:28:00] just have to work so much of the time to provide for your family. It might be that you've got. Four kids and they're all under six but there is something about the need to connect, to encourage the play and the playfulness. And isn't that how we learn otherwise? We learn to try a little bit and then give up. And that's what that little girl did. She tried. So she clearly gets some of it, but then she very quickly gave up.

Julie: Yeah, and maybe that was on this occasion. She needed to turn away and get on with something herself because on this day at this time, mom wasn't able to respond in the way she wanted, and that's also part of life is knowing what to do in yourself. She then carried on doing something herself. She's got play skills within her own self. So I'm thinking, yeah, another episode might be about play and phones, so we [00:29:00] could add that to the list, Philippa. But I'm just going back to what we started thinking about right at the very beginning. We thought we would talk about play and can it be learn? And we've talked a lot about in babies, toddlers, young children, can it be learned?

How, is that such a thing to learn, play, or does it innately. Because we have a desire to communicate and how it builds our bodies, but also how it builds our sense of ourselves and who we are in the world. But let's think then about the sort of, the other part of that, which we started with at the beginning, can play, be, learn as an adult.

Why might play need to be learned? I don't mean need as in an ought to, but there might be a desire to be playful, curious to explore as an adult when you haven't [00:30:00] experienced it as a child. So you talked earlier on about adolescents who maybe don't have the muscle body to be able to do the things they need to do at 14, 15.

I'm thinking now particularly about parents that I might work with who have a real desire to play with their children, but hadn't been played with. Themselves and so feel almost like it's a foreign language. And sometimes I feel, I'm thinking particularly of families, and you and I have worked with families in situations where the parent has had some stresses and difficulties.

And so the child may be, their child may be living with them or may be in foster care. A plan for them to be re [00:31:00] reunited or for mom and the child to live together permanently. The social workers and the court are unsure about the parent's capacity to care for their child safely. And so you and I have worked with families in those situations and sometimes a parenting course is recommended or mandated.

Sometimes you must go on this parenting course, you must go on this training. And sometimes I, I think it's a bit like. Asking somebody to speak. I don't know, Norwegian, you must speak Norwegian with your child, but I know you, you didn't learn Norwegian as a child yourself, but you must speak Norwegian to your child.

But we won't send a Norwegian speaker to help you. You must learn it out of a book. You must learn it by watching this video. You must learn it by. Coming [00:32:00] to this class and we'll teach you Norwegian, then you must teach it to your child. You must do it. And only if you do that will your children be able to still live with you.

Now I think we often do that with playfulness as well. We're asking a parent who doesn't speak play, doesn't do play, hasn't had the experience of play. It's not their first language, and yet they're asked to make it their first language with their child. And so going on a course to learn about it can be another stress for them.

And I've been thinking a lot about some families recently where the parent, the very young parents who didn't have. Close people looking after 'em had many different people looking after them as they grew up, but at 20 has become apparent by 25, they've got a 5-year-old who has [00:33:00] been removed a number of times, but from the family, and now the two of them are back together again.

But it is tenuous and using the practice that you and I know many other listeners use, which is a form of therapy called therapy, where we work with the parent and the child together. But actually what I'm discovering sometimes with families is it's not the parent and the child that I need to work with just yet.

I need to do lots and lots of this experience of play with the parent. It's almost like I need to become the parent to this parent and for them to have the experience of being a child. And so sometimes I've just worked with the parent and I've never even met the child, but by giving that parent the experience of being read to, played with laughed with [00:34:00] slightly challenged giving them that experience of nurture and engagement and structure, that it's then an embodied experience for them. They've felt it, and then what I've seen is they are able to offer that to their child because they now know what it feels like. I don't know if that in any way replicates resonates with you and some of the families you've worked with. 

I'm not teaching them play, I am engaging in playfulness with them so that they can do that. 

Philippa: I think, it's parents, it's foster carers I've worked with and adopters really? And 'cause sometimes we know. And it, that's the thing that, that you were saying, that you can know.

You can read it in a book. You can have somebody to say this is what you do. And I think that is the knowing. And in para, it's about being in the being. That's what I think there's a difference between knowing and [00:35:00] being. So you can know you need to be playful, or you can be playful and they are very different.

One is a cognitive based knowledge, that okay, yeah, I need to play the bubbles now. I need to see them laugh. I need to, and there's no feeling. And what we were talking about, yeah, I guess earlier on with the baby and the communication, it's feeling, that. 3-year-old blowing bubbles and smiling at her baby brother.

It's a feeling it's a doing, but it's a feeling. They're sh a connection, an attunement in their body. Not just in their head, are they? So I think if you. Haven't experienced it in your body to then start to do it or experience it. It feels awful and odd and embarrassing and scary sometimes. Yeah.

It's no, this is not [00:36:00] what, I'm not imaginative. I'm not, I don't do those sorts of things. I'm the practical one. I'll make sure that we've got everything I can buy the toys, I can take them to the park. I can do these things. That's what I do. I am the organizer.

Somebody else does the plane, and that's really important. Yeah. But the playing is about. An embodiment of connection. It's a feeling, that you feel your child's smile in that moment or a child's smile. Even if you can't see it, you can feel it 'cause you are feeling it too. And sometimes you can feel when it's going wrong, when it's oh my gosh, this really doesn't feel okay. But you can then adapt that play. Whereas if you haven't got it in your body, then when it goes wrong again, there's an internalization or I wonder if there is around, I did something wrong there. Rather than, oh gosh, [00:37:00] that was just a bit messy. Then how we're gonna, there's a difference to it, because one is a almost a deconstruction of what the play is. Okay, so maybe I shouldn't have given them so much of that and I shouldn't have done that. Next time I'll do that rather than, oh my gosh, we made such a mess that I wasn't that fun because you are not feeling it or maybe the times where a child is maybe more distressed by play and play isn't helpful for them or you that if you aren't feeling it, you are just knowing it. I wonder if it's it shouldn't have gone wrong 'cause I did it, like it said I should rather than, this doesn't feel okay, so it's not okay. Yeah, 

Julie: And always asking. Does this feel okay for me? Am I, engaged with this, enjoying this and it, does it feel okay for the child? [00:38:00] And then that's a thing to keep doing? And that wonderful phrase, I love when a child says again.

I feel like the absolute, best woman in the world, if somebody says again, it's God, we have cracked this. Yeah, we have found something that we both enjoy. And it might be that if I did that with another child, or the child did it with another adult, it wouldn't feel right but between the two of us, it feels right.

And I think that takes a lot of trial and error. To find those couple of things that work well in that particular relationship. Like that three-year-old girl and her brother, she, over that year I observed, built up quite a repertoire of her and him, things that just she could do with him. And that was, I don't know, I don't see them anymore, but I guess they're in their twenties, mid twenties now.

What their relationship is like. I can imagine it's quite [00:39:00] good. But I'm also thinking about the parents who perhaps for the first time as an adult or as a young parent, an early parent, are experiencing what it's like to be enjoyed and played with. In, it could be a therapy situation, it could be with a profession, it could just be with a friend or in a new relationship. That awakening of playfulness, perhaps for the first time as an adult, that I see that often comes with a sense of grief and a sense of loss. Ah, I'm getting this now at 25. Ah, somebody's offering me this. Somebody's enjoying being with me. I feel a worth of value. This playfulness stuff, ooh, is beginning to feel that it could be part of my life. I could begin to offer that to my child. Didn't think I'd be [00:40:00] able to do that. Always thought of rubbish at those things. Ooh. But oh, the grief, the loss, the sense of I've missed out, gosh, I could have been having that all through my childhood, but there wasn't anybody to give me that or there were people, but they never stayed. They couldn't stay. Something happened or I gave out lots of signals about that, but quite often there wasn't somebody to signal back to me that feedback loop never got off the ground for me. So I do remember I can see now that I gave up because there wasn't a partner. So in getting play to be relearnt as an adult. While that can be really joyful, it can also come with a sense of regret. Ah, I missed out on that. 

Philippa: I wonder if it can also come with rejection, that actually if you are [00:41:00] tentative and play, if maybe you haven't always experienced it, but you want to, or you're offering it to your child and they don't take it up. That maybe you blow bubbles at the baby and they just stare back at you, or you offer to skip with it with the toddler, or, play a playStation with a teen and they don't want to, or they don't enjoy it or they tell you did it wrong. No, that's not how you do it. Granny doesn't do it like that or Daddy doesn't do it like that. That rejection, if you haven't got all these banks of other experiences, I imagine can feel horrendous. Absolutely horrendous. And you just think, okay, I aren't any good at playing. I can't do imagination. I don't read the story and put all the voices in granddad does or like the doit nursery, so I'm just not gonna do it anymore.

And [00:42:00] that can then make it feel like it's your fault that you can't play now and didn't get played with in the past. Maybe it's because you weren't worth playing with and now you can't play. And again that's because, '

Julie: cause you are not worth playing with again. It's repeating that yeah. 'cause your child is rejecting your play advances. And that's, as you said, you might not have a sort of repertoire that you've built up since the child was a baby. Perhaps you're beginning to do this when the child is five and social workers or others or family members and others are really encouraging you and helping you to do that but you are starting from scratch, really, and you and your child don't have that five years bank of playful interactions that might have been available in another family. 

Philippa: And you might see that you are, if you are co-parenting that your partner is doing it and your partner is playful and [00:43:00] that the baby and the toddler is responding to them in one way, but then you try it and they don't respond to you in the same way.

And what is that, what does that feel like? It's why can they get that giggle or that smile or that, why do they go there and not to me? And that in itself can put you off and feel like, they don't wanna play with me because they don't like me, or they don't, and that is really hard to keep going back in and trying, because you'd, you get to the point where you think okay, I'm just not, I'm not very good at it, so I'm just not gonna do it. 

Julie: So what we're saying is, sometimes there's a baby who makes for the first move for a playful response and doesn't get what they need or what they've thought and in response and so the baby can give up. But we're also thinking now about the parent or carer, the adult who is open for playful [00:44:00] responses. Does the opening move. But the child or the baby rejects, and so the parent, the adult can also give up. And then, part of our work as professionals who help families is to fathom out what's going on, what's the history here? Who's given up first, and how difficult it is to then bring the parent and the child together. Say in therapy play and invite them to play and we will often facilitate the activities, but in our choice of activities and the roles that we invite the parent and the child to be in, we have to be so aware of what is their history of attempts and giving up that is probably part of the history along the way for both of them, which is why they've come to see us in the first place. 

Philippa: Yeah, and I think [00:45:00] Hillary Kennedy the interview I think of a few weeks ago were, which is about video interaction guidance. That's what she talks about what you were just saying is finding those moments where the parent and the child is connecting and expanding it. I suppose they do it by noticing it because. It probably is happening, but maybe the parent. Isn't noticing it. Yeah. Because they are feeling like, my baby doesn't like me, or my baby doesn't like me. And it's not the moments aren't very big, so they're just like a second. And I guess that's what we do in the play sometimes, isn't it? Is we will look back and set and notice, look how your son just looked at you. That moment with that little smile, it's gone really quickly, but luke, when you blew that cotton ball or found that balloon for him, there was a moment, Luke, where he did engage with that and you [00:46:00] were there together, and we find those moments, don't we? And try and make them. Bigger. Really. I suppose for them and longer so they can stay in it. 

Julie: Yeah. To notice it. 'cause it may well be happening, but if you've built up a thought that my baby, my child doesn't like me, my child pushes me away, my child is rejecting me. Then those small attempts, those small, what we sometimes call moments of meeting. Are literally just a second on the video sometimes. And we need to work very hard sometimes to find them, but they are there and it's then helping the parent and the child notice those, oh, look at the way that ha Oh, look at you two, is to then, as you said, to expand them, to grow them, to make them longer, and to make them repeat more frequently.

And then it's like the parent and the child are off because they've [00:47:00] got the hang of it on their own and they don't need us. And we can withdraw then. 

Philippa: That's great. And I think that it's probably a really great place to start of end this on that hope, because what we've said is that play is there, it can be missed and it can disappear if it isn't encouraged isn't connected with or isn't given the opportunity to flourish and that's will be another episode, but if babies and toddlers don't have the space and the opportunity to be able to play, but where we've ended is with, noticing with opportunity, with connection, sometimes with support from other people, play can return at any age, whether you are three years old or 63 years old, you can develop playfulness and play in your own way, in your own family in [00:48:00] something that feels safe and fun and okay for you? So we'll end on that note of hope thanks Philippa. Absolutely. So thanks very much for listening to our podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, please hit the like button and subscribe to our podcast. Thank you very much. Bye.