Brain plasticity enables change: for the good through therapy, for the bad through abuse. During play children learn, enact and develop essential life skills: be playful, funny, use humour, tease effectively, get and give enjoyment, reduce boredom- all these skills support brain plasticity and happiness.

Freedom in play allows children to get a sense of independence and an understanding of risk, danger and challenge. During play children learn to asses risks, test boundaries, exercise control, be assertive, use power effectively, make the best use of freedom of choice.

Exploratory play broadens children’ horizons, enables them to understand the world and opens their minds about it’s true potential. Children learn important life skills: investigate effectively, explore the unknown, experiment with possibilities, cope with uncertainty, adapt behaviour to get the most out of the environment, develop combinatorial thinking, test unusual combinations of behaviour and thought.

Establishing group friendships supports children’s understanding of social networks and the transmission of children’s culture. Playing together teaches children to make friends, cooperate to reach common goals, chat informally with friends, understand and appreciate socio cultural diversity, enjoy solitude, negotiate and resolve conflicts without violence, develop and use play cues, interpret mimic actions, use a personal theory of mind ( important social cognitive skills that encompasses the ability to attribute mental states, including emotions, desires, beliefs, knowledge; it’s referred to as theory as we can make predictions about what other people are thinking but we can never know for sure). When playing with their peers children learn self acceptance and respect for others, they practice social roles, learn cultural rules, interact with other cultures, prepare for adulthood, challenge social norms and establish social hierarchies.

Healthy mind in healthy body, physical play is paramount for children’s holistic development. Children develop their muscular skeletal system and overall physical health through running, jumping, climbing, crawling, balancing, swinging, sliding, spinning, etc. Physical play allows children to develop and utilise gross and fine motor skills, develop hand to eye coordination, use their body effectively, develop mimetic behaviour ( mimetic theory is an explanation of human behaviour and culture: we desire what others desire through imitation), improve physical strength.
Children acquire information and knowledge, explore the unknown, understand cause and effect, understand shape, size, texture, scaling, calibration, sharing, make good use of thinking time, analyse and evaluate, inspect and contextualise.
Through processes like using objects to represent other things, imagination, make believe, adapt to the environment, developing an understanding of complexity, exploring combinatorial possibilities and appreciated beauty, children develop their abstract thinking, learn aesthetic appreciation, problem solving and combinatorial flexibility.
Children use symbolic play to express inner most feelings or come to term with traumatic events, reduce anxiety, relieve tension and neutralise every day stress, use transitional objects as security mechanisms, master subconscious conflicts and feelings, satisfy libidinous desires, explore aspirations, construct a preferred reality, create a secure and comfortable world, all skills essential for stress reduction and speedy recovery from illness.

Through play children learn that each of them is unique, they develop self awareness and confidence. The play processes that support self awareness may be exploring different selves, mixing fantasy with reality, exercising autonomy of the play experience, developing and utilising survival skills, exploratory activities.