There is nothing more human than play. 

Humans were designed to learn in play. In fact, nearly all mammals evolved this way.

Play’s Power

At our learning space, we provide learners fresh air, daylight, large muscle movement, and the freedom to stim.

Children must be challenged educationally, however the wisdom emanating from the building itself is explicit: children deserve and flourish in an atmosphere of love, community, mutual respect, beauty and a connectivity to nature.

The school building as third teacher

Children have evolved to learn mainly through thousands of hours of play. Play is a developmental powerhouse in a way no lesson plan or curriculum could be. 

The more we learn about the brain and body the more clear this has become. When we play and use our bodies we form connections between our neurons that can serve us for a lifetime. Play forms the basis of our social and emotional well-being. It teaches us to take risks and be okay with failure. It builds our abilities as problem solvers. And possibly most important this generation’s children, it bolsters their creativity and ability to generate novel ideas.  

Play’s Power

“There’s a lot of things that kids built,” he explains, looking around at the playground. “It’s not adults doing work; it’s kids doing work!”

Children need an environment with “the opportunity to engage in open, free play where they’re allowed to self-organize,” he adds. “It’s really a central part of being human and developing into competent adulthood.”

Play Hard, Live Free: Where Wild Play Still Rules : NPR Ed : NPR

Immediate Contact With the Outdoors: Fresh Air, Large Muscle Movement, Daylight, and Stimming

Give your kids the gift of daylight.

In order to maintain healthy attention kids need three things that are often in short supply in schools — fresh air, large muscle movement, and daylight. One of the easiest to fix, in many schools, is daylight.

How Will You Redesign Your School Over The Next Six Months?

school should go further than providing space, light, and air: “It should be a place where the child can feel that he belongs, where he can move in freedom, and where he can enjoy immediate contact with the outdoors.”

The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids

The research is clear, but truth be told I feel no need to justify allowing my students to play. Simply the fact that they so clearly want to play is sufficient for me. The joy it brings is more than enough.

We have only one childhood. When what should be a play-filled period of life is gone, it is indeed ‘lost’. And that’s the loss I am worried about.

So when we talk about restoring humanity in education, I can’t think of a better place to start than in play, especially with our youngest learners.

Play’s Power

Recess

For children, this is precisely the role played by recess; research shows that kids return from a session on the playground better able to focus their attention and to engage their executive function faculties. Yet at schools all over the country, recess has been reduced or even eliminated in order to generate more “seat time” spent on academic learning. The notion that time away from concentrated mental work is effectively time wasted is one of several wrongheaded notions we hold regarding breaks—wrongheaded, in this case, because the ability to attend to such work declines steadily over time, and is actually refreshed by a bout of bodily exertion. Parents, teachers, and administrators who want students to achieve academically should be advocating for an increase in physically active recess time.

The Extended Mind – Annie Murphy Paul

Autistic and Monotropic Play

We play differently, because we learn differently, because our brains are wired differently.

Building Super-Highways – Why Monotropism Works for Autistics – Autistic Village

When differences in play do not align to socially constructed understanding of normalcy, as it happens to autistic children, they are generally pathologised and considered faults of the individual to be fixed (Waltz, 2020). It follows that autistic children should be thought to play like typical children, through adult-led experiences, in order to improve later development outcomes. As a result, the space and time available to autistic children to experiment spontaneous play, and feel content and capable about it, are significantly reduced, making play a main site for the production of disabling experiences (Conn, 2015; Conn and Drew 2017; Willans 2020).

Autistic Play at Forest School : pretend play characteristics seen otherwise | Forest School Association

From our very early years, our style of learning has been misunderstood by NT (neurotypical) researchers. Indeed, they even pathologise it in the diagnostic manual, DSM 5, as ‘difficulties in sharing imaginative play’ and ‘lining up toys or flipping objects’. Our exploratory style of play is seen as a negative thing that needs to be addressed. They completely fail to take into account our different processing and learning styles that lies behind our choice to play a different way.

Our ability to specialise from an early age is described as ‘highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (e.g., strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interests)’ – DSM 5. Our natural way of being is seen as deficient and needing to be fixed.

This failure to understand our neurology and recognise our way of being as equally natural and normal leads to damaging ‘therapies’ being promoted. These therapies look to correct our style of play, and our specialist-style focus on interests, ‘encouraging’ us to leave our natural style and instead mimic the more familiar NT style. Both therapists and parents believe they are doing something helpful and supportive, unaware that they are stealing a very valuable learning tool and leaving nothing but an empty box in its place.

We play differently, because we learn differently, because our brains are wired differently. And this difference has a value and reason behind it. Teaching us to play like NTs is like teaching a cat to behave like a dog ‘because everyone prefers dogs to cats’. There is this false belief that we get bullied because we are different – this isn’t true. We get bullied because children are taught to bully and attack difference. We get bullied because adults choose to support and promote a culture of conformity. Our difference is not the issue, people’s negative attitudes to difference is.

In learning terms, you deny us the opportunity to properly create and develop the essential connections that form the foundation of our knowledge structure. The autistic brain is designed to create these connections in a very particular way, and our natural style of play supports this.

Building Super-Highways – Why Monotropism Works for Autistics – Autistic Village

• How Using ‘Interests’ Can Help Build Connection to Understanding and to Developing Skills (Wenn Lawson) – ‘As autistic individuals we find it heaps easier to connect to understanding when the topic, sentence, concept or idea you are wanting us to appreciate can be related in some way to areas of our interest or attention.’
• Building Super-Highways – Why Monotropism Works for Autistics (Nanny Aut 2021) – ‘We play differently, because we learn differently, because our brains are wired differently.’
• Learning to play. No. Playing to learn. (Nanny Aut 2021) – ‘Autistic children focus on the mechanics of the world, through pattern making and identifying connections. We organise, sort, line up and categorise.’
• Autistic Play at Forest School : pretend play characteristics seen otherwise(Stefania Donzelli 2021) ‘one key step is to acknowledge the existence of patterns in the ways autistic children experience play and think about their play behaviours not as something puzzling or problematic, but rather as characteristics of autistic play culture‘
• The double empathy problem: salience and interpersonal flow (slides, Damian Milton 2018) – ‘the flow-like states brought about by the pursuit of ‘special interests’ or the repetition of actions can be seen as a necessary coping strategy for people and not ‘behaviours’ to be controlled or regulated.’

Monotropism In Practice

Secondly, the purpose of play is to self-discover, to self-motivate. To be enjoyable. The moment you have told a child they’re Playing All Wrong, and enforced your idea of ‘correct’, well, that’s not play. That’s control by you./

Now, let’s look at some autistic reality. Autistic children are not broken versions of other children. They play differently because that’s necessary for their different brain type. Their brains are meant to super-focus. That’s how they learn. So concentrating on a toy/

And finding out every possible fascination about that one toy, that’s totally correct for an autistic child. From that, they can then begin to generalise, e.g. from a toy dog, learning about dog breeds, temperaments, care, communication, skills, equipment, etc. Form, shape/

An autistic child will also want to keep their brain operational. This means socialising differently, to respect that. Pushing them into ‘normalised socialising’ actually causes brain ‘shutdown’ or meltdown events, which are terrifying for the child, not a splendid idea/

An autistic child will often naturally want to play somewhere quieter, often away from fluorescent lighting. Minimising eye contact, playing in parallel with another child. That’s good and appropriate autistic play. That’s a good set of signs of self-care and self-learning/

So, what can we do to ensure that autistic children can learn, and are treated respectfully and cheerfully by the non-autistic children? We can teach people about autism, and why they need to play differently. We can help organise places for them to play, their way/

And we can look out for the child being ostracised or bullied by non-autistic children who take an instant ‘dislike’ them, because the autistic child is using a completely natural but different social signalling system. Getting autistic children to realise they’re misreading them

We can help explain to the autistic child why the non-autistic ones play differently, and why they need to do that. Why they need to make a lot of eye contact with others, and why they might incorrectly think everyone has to do that. We can be a good ally, an affirming support/

We can perhaps set up a play club around the autistic child’s interests, for like-minded children who want to play that way (not come in and force their own play style on the situation). We can then watch the autistic child flourish, and develop expertise and dedication/

We have to stop the idea that autistic children are ‘broken’ and need fixing. The work of https://dart.ed.ac.uk/research/nd-iq/?fbclid=IwAR0r1tF1ARm2XKkgphruAksGENk-W1V00WzOKNhrwolSg5gLd_P1q-CjFDQ… shows that autistic people are great collaborators with one another. But misunderstandings happen fast when put with a non-autistic companion. It’s that simple.

Ann Memmott MA 🌈 

…one key step is to acknowledge the existence of patterns in the ways autistic children experience play and think about their play behaviours not as something puzzling or problematic, but rather as characteristics of autistic play culture: expression of their neurological functioning and of their experience of living in a society that sees autism through a deficit-based lens. Practically, this implies focusing on “what children do and what it means to them”, instead of paying attention only to the external features of play and how they appear deficient in relation to normative developmental frameworks (Conn, 2015: 1193; Conn and Drew 2017; Person, 2020; Willans, 2020).

Autistic Play at Forest School : pretend play characteristics seen otherwise | Forest School Association

We found important commonalities and differences in the ways that socialization in play, imaginary play, and flow (a state involving intense focus on the play) are experienced. Autistic adults discussed the importance of both solitary play and social play, with solitary play having an important recuperative function. They also reported preferences for parallel play and playing with similar autistic people. They also discussed imaginary play experiences, including social role-play and grounded-in-reality play, and the dual nature of flow experiences during play.

Diversity in Autistic Play: Autistic Adults’ Experiences

…monotropism can be very effective in enabling forest school practitioners to comprehend the rationales behind autistic play behaviours so as to appreciate and validate autistic play culture, and to discriminate whether and how autistic children need support.

Autistic Play at Forest School : pretend play characteristics seen otherwise | Forest School Association

Furthermore, much play has a theatrical element to it which is dependent on steps towards awareness which it will usually take monotropic children much longer to take.

Monotropism – Wrong Planet Syndrome

There are lots of opinions out there about autistic people and playing.  You may have read or been told that autistic people won’t be able to play imaginatively, or that if they do, they are likely to take longer to do so. You may have been told that autistic children play inappropriately with toys.  The fact is that many autistic people play very imaginatively from very young ages! Many of us have vivid imaginations, compose music, write poetry and novels, are amazing artists. Please do not assume that autistic people will be unable to be imaginative.

Sometimes we play in different ways from other people – this is what is often referred to as inappropriate. We would argue that there is no right or wrong way to play. 

Autistic play can be:

• Playing with toys in unexpected ways (e.g., spinning wheels on a car)
• Lining up toys (for many of us that is the game by itself)
• Playing with a toy for longer/shorter than you may expect for a child’s age
• Word play and puns
• Interest in things you’d expect in a younger/older child
• Repetition, and repetition, and repetition, and repetition…
• Attachment to objects you may not expect e.g., spoons, DVD cases
• Intense/fleeting focus
• Playing in parallel (alongside a friend) or individually
• Sensory seeking
• Stimming (self-stimulatory behaviours)
• Acting out scenes from TV, movies, books etc.
• Echolalia (repeating a word or phrase said by someone else)
• Palilalia (repeating a word or phrase they made up themselves)
• Scripting games before they happen
• Making up own rules for games where there are already established rules
• Taking on other people’s personas
• Highly integrated into the game – deep focus
• Organising/sorting items
• Creating patterns
• And much more!

While some of these may look quite different, autistic people around the world play in these ways, and it is an important part of autistic culture.  Supporting autistic play is essential for good mental health and it can be done in the following ways:

• Accept the way we play
• Praise creativity and imagination
• Support special interests
• Parallel play (may or may not turn into co-operative play)
• Buy toys they are actually interested in
• Don’t always wait for special occasions

Autistic Play — Children and Young People — Autism Understanding Scotland

What I did instead was pace, for about 8-10 hours a day. Back and forth, back and forth, wearing footpaths in the grass until my Dad would make me move to a different part of the yard so the grass could have a chance. (It wasn’t usually able to grow back. There were plenty of days where 10 hours was an undercount.) Sometimes I would walk on my toes; sometimes I’d adopt big, stiff postures, or bounce up and down. I’d move my arms high or low or to the side, but my arms were always moving — I’d flap my hands, or shake a stick, or, most often, shake a book in my hands. The book had to be just the right size, with just the right kind of paper, held in just the right spot. I destroyed dozens of books over the years this way; pretty soon, my parents learned to buy me cheap paperbacks specifically for this, to keep the other books safe. My mouth was open and my face was vacant. Sometimes you could hear me talking to myself, and if you listened, you would hear that I was scripting, or reciting lists. Usually I was silent. I would avoid other children and I refused to play with my own siblings; I wanted to do this instead. I would do this at preschool, at family gatherings, at church, and in the store. I would do this all day.

It alarmed everyone.

I did this through high school. I learned not to do it where other people could see, but the intensity didn’t abate. It only began to slowly fade away after I turned 17, replaced by other stims and some cognitive-motor changes and, perhaps, growing up. If you saw it when I was little, you can still find the traces of it now — I still pace when I’m working out a new idea. I wrap beads around my wrist instead of shaking a book to pieces. I still spend hours most nights doing repetitive activities while my mind wanders.

No one considered this “functional” play. Every expert saw this as something that was very likely harming my development — or, best case scenario, as an indication that I was having a hard time, with the behavior as a barometer for how bad things were. My parents ultimately didn’t try to get me to stop outright (for which I am profoundly grateful), but everyone agreed that it would be good if I could, and any fleeting reduction was celebrated or, at least, seen as a sign of progress.

My play — not my “behavior,” my play — was deeply functional, for me. Those hours and hours of often silent scripting while regulating my body let me develop a deep bank of fluent language that other people could understand. When I can rattle off fluid paragraphs to you about a topic, it’s because I’ve put in those hours of scripting and practice, even today — and because, long before I was practicing how to explain autism or talk about policy, I was practicing different sentence structures for hours in the backyard. That was not at all apparent from an outside point of view. But that’s what I was doing. And when I wasn’t scripting, I was making and reciting lists and schedules — and that was giving me a structure for understanding my world.

And most importantly? It just felt good. It was calming and reassuring. I am told that is one of the main developmental purposes of play, in fact.

About “Functional Play” | Just Stimming…

Image credit: Rachel Dorsey: Autistic SLP, LLC

Play and Flow States

Most autistic adults in this study experienced a flow state in relation to their play, involving intense focus on a play activity for a long time and possibly an altered sense of the passage of time. Intense focus is the defining characteristic of flow,and our findings, combined with previous research, suggest that this is also a defining characteristic of autistic play flow experiences. More broadly, the combination of previous research support and our finding that a couple of participants viewed the experience of flow as a difference between autistic and non-autistic play suggests that autistic engagement in flow is a potential characteristic of at least some autistic people’s play. As highlighted by previous research, autistic people’s engagement in flow may be a consequence of monotropism, where autistic people’s intensely focused attention on few interests or activities means immersion in an activity and entering into a flow state is more likely. As play may be a form of interest, it is therefore unsurprising that many autistic people experience flow during play.

We also found that many experienced both benefits and limitations of flow, which suggests that for autistic people, flow has a dual nature. Our finding of mental benefits of flow, including relaxation, suggests that this experience could be important for autistic people’s well-being. However, autistic adults also discussed the negative impact of flow on aspects of everyday life, particularly self-care, which others have highlighted. Our findings parallel those of Pavlopoulou et al.,particularly in relation to the negative impact of flow on sleeping and eating. We build on this research by also highlighting relaxation as a specific benefit of flow. Overall, the findings suggest that it is important to acknowledge the dual nature of flow relating to autistic people’s play experiences.

Diversity in Autistic Play: Autistic Adults’ Experiences

Children were also observed to experience a flow state, a subjective experience characterized by intense involvement or concentration in an activity.32 Most recently, Pavlopoulou et al.33 interviewed autistic adolescents about their motivations and the benefits of playing online video games. Example findings include that while immersion within a game (i.e., a flow state) can have a negative impact on daily routines, gaming promotes a sense of agency and belonging and supports emotional regulation.

Diversity in Autistic Play: Autistic Adults’ Experiences

In our study, we found that flow was experienced as relaxing by autistic adults. This means it could be important for supporting autistic people’s wellbeing. However, we also found that autistic adults experienced negative aspects of flow on aspects of everyday life. This included flow limiting their sleep. So whilst flow is important, it is also important to be aware that it can have its downsides too.

We hope that better understanding of flow and its upsides and downsides can empower autistic people to manage their relaxation and wellbeing through play.

Why Do People Assume Autistic Play Is “Wrong”?

Parallel Play

But she wasn’t there to procrastinate. For an hour, Ms. Bee, a teacher in her 30s, live-streamed herself sorting the clothes on her account dedicated to ADHD: brainsandspoons. As the live stream went on, viewers jumped in to do their own laundry “with” her.

“Everybody was so encouraging,” said Ms. Bee, who learned she has ADHD as an adult. “It made it really feel like a group project, not just me by myself on camera. It definitely made the time go by faster.”

The ADHD community calls the practice “body doubling.”

‘Body doubling,’ an ADHD productivity tool, is flourishing online | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

If you imagine that an autistic kid at school is likely to be wrenched out of their attention tunnel multiple times every day, each time leading to disorientation and deep discomfort, you are on your way to understanding why school environments can be so stressful for many autistic students. If you can avoid contributing to that, you may find that you have an easier time with your autistic students: try entering into their attention tunnel when you can, rather than tugging them out of it. Parallel play is one powerful tool for this; start where the child is, show interest in what they’re focused on. If you do need to pull them out of whatever they’re focusing on, it’s best to give them a bit of time.

Craft, Flow and Cognitive Styles

Play and Psychological Safety

Play emerges from a sense of safety. Even the most playful animal won’t play when frightened or angry.

Monotropism – Wrong Planet Syndrome

Here, a desire for compliance with social norms and expectations involves ignoring obvious autistic joy and play, and equally ignoring obvious autistic fear.

Given how widely reported fear is among autistic people, we need to recognise that people who are constantly frightened and yet are carrying on with life and dealing with things are showing a lot of courage as well as determination.  Frightened or not, making the effort to perform so as to fit in is often exhausting and likely to be at the expense of other capacity  (see discussion of monotropism and see Colored spoons… and social codes where there is a version of ‘spoon theory’ which also builds on the idea that there is a limited supply of processing resources).

Monotropism – Culture and Ignorance

Self-Directed Executive Functioning

We hypothesized that time spent in less-structured activities would give children opportunities to practice self-directed executive functioning, and lead to benefits. To investigate this possibility, we collected information from parents about their 6–7 year-old children’s daily, annual, and typical schedules. We categorized children’s activities as “structured” or “less-structured” based on categorization schemes from prior studies on child leisure time use. We assessed children’s self-directed executive functioning using a well-established verbal fluency task, in which children generate members of a category and can decide on their own when to switch from one subcategory to another. The more time that children spent in less-structured activities, the better their self-directed executive functioning. The opposite was true of structured activities, which predicted poorer self-directed executive functioning. These relationships were robust (holding across increasingly strict classifications of structured and less-structured time) and specific (time use did not predict externally-driven executive functioning). We discuss implications, caveats, and ways in which potential interpretations can be distinguished in future work, to advance an understanding of this fundamental aspect of growing up.

Our findings offer support for a relationship between the time children spend in less-structured and structured activities and the development of self-directed executive function. When considering our entire participant sample, children who spent more time in less-structured activities displayed better self-directed control, even after controlling for age, verbal ability, and household income. By contrast, children who spent more time in structured activities exhibited poorer self-directed EF, controlling for the same factors. The observed relationships between time use and EF ability were specific to self-directed EF, as neither structured nor less-structured time related to performance on externally-driven EF measures. These findings represent the first demonstration that time spent in a broad range of less-structured activities outside of formal schooling predicts goal-directed behaviors not explicitly specified by an adult, and that more time spent in structured activities predicts poorer such goal-directed behavior. Consistent with Vygotskian developmental theory and programs that build on that theory, such as Tools of the Mind, less-structured time may uniquely support the development of self-directed control by affording children with additional practice in carrying out goal-directed actions using internal cues and reminders. That is, less-structured activities may give children more self-directed opportunities. From this perspective, structured time could slow the development of self-directed control, since adults in such scenarios can provide external cues and reminders about what should happen, and when.

Frontiers | Less-structured time in children’s daily lives predicts self-directed executive functioning

Activity-Permissive Settings

The tight connection between thinking and moving is a legacy of our species’s evolutionary history.

The Extended Mind – Annie Murphy Paul

Play Is Learning

Make room for play. Play is learning.

Nick Covington, Play-Based Learning is learning! (with Lego) – YouTube

True play is deep and uninterrupted engagement in the activity of one’s own choice.

True Play is most frequently characterized by observable experiences of risk, joy and deep engagement. This is the deepest manifestation of learning, growth and development.

True Play flourishes in places of love where the materials, environments and decision-making attend to the needs and differences of the individual and the group.

When given space to reflect, those who experience True Play and those who take part in deep and engaged observation of True Play will create ecologies that prioritize the understanding of learning and development in their respective communities.

Educators and policy-makers committed to True Play protect the child’s right to experiences of True Play, and make True Play a priority in their decision-making about education. 

True Play Statement — AnjiPlay

The AnjiPlay approach is based on five interconnected principles: love, risk, joy, engagement, and reflection, and a fundamental belief in the ability of the child. 

Love: Safety that comes from responsive, reliable, and consistent environments and relationships. The experience of being trusted, heard, seen, and respected. 

Risk: The experience of doing something with uncertain outcomes based on a prediction. Risk is the basis of inquiry, learning, discovery, and the scientific method. 

Joy: The internal reward that comes from experiences of risk, deep engagement, and discovery. The presence of joy is the clearest measure of quality in early childhood programs. 

Engagement: A sense of connection and purpose that arises from exploration and discovery of the physical and social worlds.  

Reflection: The process of thinking about, interpreting, and understanding experiences and information. 

Principles and Practices — AnjiPlay

Further Reading