I was reading in the
September 27 issue of the New York Times Magazine about how certain kinds of dramatic play develops cognitive function in pre-K and kindergarten aged children. The idea is that certain structured dramatic play stimulates cognitive-self regulation, rather than externally induced behavioral regulation.
The author, Paul Tough, writes:
"The ability of young children to control their emotional and cognitive impulses, it turns out, is a remarkably strong indicator of both short-term and long-term success, academic and otherwise. In some studies, self-regulation skills have been shown to predict academic achievement more reliably than I.Q. tests. The problem is that just as we’re coming to understand the importance of self-regulation skills, those skills appear to be in short supply among young American children."Tough describes the work of Leong and Bodrova, who examine this role of self-regulation in children:
"Over the past 15 years, Deborah Leong and Elena Bodrova, scholars of child development based in Denver, have developed a program called Tools of the Mind, dedicated to improving the self-regulation abilities of young children, starting as early as age 3. Tools of the Mind is based on the teachings of Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist who died of tuberculosis in 1934. Their program, they say, can reliably teach self-regulation skills to pretty much any child — poor or rich; typical achievers as well as many of those who are considered to have special needs. (They make the claim that many kids given diagnoses of A.D.H.D. would not need Ritalin if they were enrolled in Tools of the Mind.) And if Leong and Bodrova are right, those improved self-regulation skills will lead not only to fewer classroom meltdowns and expulsions in prekindergarten and kindergarten; they will also lead to better reading and math scores later on. Dramatic play, believed to improve cognitive self-control, is a central part of the Tools of the Mind curriculum.
At the heart of the Tools of the Mind methodology is a simple but surprising idea: that the key to developing self-regulation is play, and lots of it. But not just any play. The necessary ingredient is what Leong and Bodrova call “mature dramatic play”: complex, extended make-believe scenarios, involving multiple children and lasting for hours, even days. If you want to succeed in school and in life, spend hour after hour dressing up in firefighter hats and wedding gowns, cooking make-believe hamburgers and pouring nonexistent tea, doing the hard, serious work of playing pretend."Full disclosure: I have 2 children ages 4 and 6, where I observe all kinds of examples of this behavior at home.
I have witnessed dramatic play with my kids that resembles chaos, and play where I swear that I was witnessing the beginning of self-directed cooperation. The
Times magazine article talks about how dramatic play is where self- narrative enables children to posses a larger capacity for controlling their own behavior. They are playing a role, and their specific narratives allows them to fit specific behavioral norms into their character. The multi-stimuli of their normal world is filtered by the rules of the character they are playing. For example, if the child is playing a fireman, they can only do and say what a fireman does. The very practice of this strengthens their abilty to filter out distractions when inhabiting their real-life personas. Perhaps this kind of play myelinates the cognitive pathways that helps them ultimately resist every new enticing stimulus that would distract them from performing well in their lives.
I find this idea to have many implications for how we can practice engaged listening. If our child's narrative or role is to practice observing a set of rules for how they interact, they are practicing how to control the filters of the inputs and outputs of their minds. They are practicing listening and expressing themselves under a set of rules that they consciously impose for themselves. There is a choice, or mindfullness in this. Perhaps it is difficult, as adults to practice the discipline of engaged listening, (while holding our judgement to the side when considering an external idea). What if our "play" narrative is to be the character who is the engaged listener? Are we able to listen, and think in a way consistent with this listening character we are trying on? It is a new interpretation of Descartes, I think, therefore I am?
"I think I am a listener, therefore, I am a listener."