Running an events business can be challenging at the best of times, but seeing it “fall off a cliff” was hard for former professional rugby player Darren Clayton, during lockdown. One of the things that has helped alleviate the stress is taking time to play with his four-year-old daughter. “When I’m with Alexa, I have to stay present in the moment,” he says. “That really does help. My anxiety levels were quite high at one point but laughing and messing around with her, acting silly, dressing up, going outside … it’s time to not think: ‘What’s going to happen? How am I going to survive? How long is this going to go on for?’”
Clayton isn’t alone in struggling with his mental health over the past year. According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics, depression rates among adults have doubled since the Covid-19 pandemic began. There’s been an impact on children too – Childline reported a 16% increase in the number of mental health counselling sessions for children aged 11 and under. And a survey by Save the Children found that more than eight in 10 children reported an increase in negative feelings.
Maria Bataller, co-founder of an eco-friendly toy company, has two children – a daughter, aged five, and a son, aged three. She says lockdown was hard on her daughter, Sophia, in particular. “She understood there was a virus and she had to wash her hands a lot. But she wasn’t sure why we wouldn’t let her play with her friends or go to soft play,” Bataller says. “We used play to talk about emotions because her mood was changing a lot. We painted faces on stones to determine the differences between happy, sad, upset, made our own dough, and learned about nature while out on our walks.” Bataller and her husband found it therapeutic too. “We’d be playing with the dough after the kids went to bed, or filling in their colouring books. Lockdown was really tiring and challenging – play did help.”
Play develops resilience, it strengthens parent-child relationships, supports children’s development and promotes mental health and wellbeing. A 2018 study by the LEGO Group found that 89% of parents enjoy playtime as much as their child does and 91% believe it’s good for their own wellbeing. One programme in particular, in Pakistan, found that mothers suffering from depression who regularly played with their children over a 10-week period experienced a decline in their symptoms (during and after the intervention), compared with mothers who didn’t.
“We’ve seen that parents who play with their children feel much better,” Bo Stjerne Thomsen, chair of learning through play at the LEGO Foundation, says. “We learn a lot from the openness, flexibility and risk-taking of children, and their curiosity. While playing, you engage in problem-solving, you’re using your imagination, you develop self-control – regulating emotions and collaborating.”
Clinical psychotherapist, play therapy supervisor, and author of the 15-Minute Parenting series, Joanna Fortune says one of the challenges parents face is in how they think about play. “It isn’t a box of toys in a room,” she says. “Play is a state of mind, it’s how we live and experience life in a playful way, and it fuels flexibility and adaptability. During the pandemic, we’ve really needed that because our social norms, how the world works, how we live and how we function in the world have all changed.” Play is pivotal in helping parents and their children to cope with change, she adds. “A playful outlook teaches us we’re not in charge of how things are going to work out. We can create organisation within the chaos through play because we can adapt.”
The pandemic has shifted the scope of the LEGO Foundation to communicate more directly with parents, as well as continuing to work with governments by advocating for increased focus and investment in learning through play. In doing so, the team developed the LEGO playlist, a series of online activities for parents and children to try together at home. It worked with partners including Unicef on programmes that promote playful interactions and parent mental health and wellbeing, such as Caring for the Caregiver. This approach aims to provide support for parents and caregivers as, at the LEGO Foundation, it is believed that if caregivers are not supported to take care of themselves, it becomes harder for them to be present, deal with stress and engage in playful interactions with their children. Unicef’s parenting hub, which launched in 2018, has also seen a spike in demand as parents seek advice. The mini parenting masterclasses, for example, provide insights from health experts and child psychologists into topics such as the stages of early brain development, the importance of play and childhood regression.
“The pandemic has created a shadow crisis of care and learning, where parents became the frontline responders for children’s survival, care and education,” Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, deputy executive director for partnerships at Unicef, says. “The increase in multiple stressors faced by parents has laid bare the pressing need for greater investment and support towards parents’ mental health and emotional wellbeing, especially for the most vulnerable families.”
Thomsen is optimistic that the time families will have spent together over the pandemic will mark a permanent shift in how play is prioritised – at home and at school – with far reaching benefits for the mental health of parents and children. However, for some parents the pandemic has been an added stress that has made it difficult for them to continue doing simple things, such as sleeping or concentrating. In these cases, they may need professional help so they can get back to being present and able to engage in playful interactions with their children. It is important that parents don’t feel alone and know they can ask for help if they feel isolated. “We’ve seen that if parents have high anxiety and stress, they can put that stress on their children. But if you have a playful mindset to be curious and open to new things, to find alternatives and be more flexible, that relieves stress and provides opportunities to develop resilience and to learn.”
Are you looking for fun and engaging learning through play activities for your children? Visit the LEGO Foundation’s Playlist
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