The Importance Of Play

A few weeks ago it was my mother-in-law's birthday. So I sat down with my three and a half year old and asked him what he wanted to get his umi for her special day. He looked at me and then he stared straight into my eyes and said very solemnly, "Umi would like a transformer." "Are you sure, mate? Do you really think Umi wants a star-screen transformer?" "Yes, mummy. That's what Umi wants." Now, if you've got young kids like me, then this is probably a familiar scene. And it turns out that scientists and researchers have a term for what's behind it. It's called "theory of mind." Theory of mind is the understanding that different people have minds of their own. But we all have different thoughts and we have different experiences of the world. As adults, we take this for granted. But just like learning how to walk or to talk, it takes kids a bit of time to figure this out. Welcome to BabyLab, a podcast from Babyology and Western Sydney University about how kids learn to communicate. In this episode, we explore what makes babies tick. How understanding your baby's brain can help you get through their next toddler tantrum. And why play is one of the best things kids can do with their time. All that and more coming up after the break. Welcome back to BabyLab. I'm Gemila Rizvi. I think it's always really interesting to try and understand a child's perspective. In this episode, we're focusing on something extremely important. Children that are very young are very egocentric in their perspective. Let's see if it's fun. Okay. And they can't see it at all from another point of view. In the first few years of life, a child's brain perceives the world from an egocentric perspective. Their brain doesn't separate what they know or feel from what someone else might know or feel. A lot of tantrum behaviours might stem from the child not seeing something from another person's perspective and holding their ground there. And also, it's impossible to reason with toddlers because again, they're not seeing the world from anybody else's perspective other than their own. Understanding that people can have different opinions or feelings than mine. Well, that's something I've just always taken for granted. I never realised that it was something that I specifically had to learn back when I was a kid. Theory of mind is the understanding that we have our own set of beliefs and values about the world, but that somebody else also has beliefs and values, but that these may be different to us. And so, to have a theory of mind is to be able, in a sense, to put yourself in someone else's shoes and young children don't have this initially. For example, here's Dr. Karen Mattock again explaining a really fun experiment that researchers use to test a child's theory of mind. We call it the Smarties task. So, you have books of Smarties that are chocolates and you ask the child what's in here and they'll say, "Oh, Smarties, chocolates." And then you open the box and it's not Smarties in there, it's pencils, say. And they'll be really surprised at this. And then you say, "Now, your mum, she's outside the room." So, when we show her this box, what do you think she's going to say is in it? A child without theory of mind will say pencils. A child with theory of mind will say, "Smarties." In fact, a young child's more challenging behaviours can be better understood if we remember that they are still developing a theory of mind. Take the classic supermarket tantrum as an example. When a child is having a tantrum, they are expressing some desire to get their own way or to get what they want. And so, they go to this tantrum mode because they don't yet fully understand the other person's position of why they cannot do or get what they want because they don't yet have that capacity to see a situation from any other perspective other than their own. According to Dr. Mattock, these tantrum moments can actually be important learning opportunities where parents can teach kids about how their perspective might be different to their own. So, for the child having a tantrum in the supermarket, even though your desire is to run away and leave them there because you don't want to be seen with a child having a tantrum, you obviously can't do that. Of course, anyone would be upset if they were told they couldn't have a lollipop. So that is a real feeling that they are experiencing and that's a valid one. So acknowledging that, but trying to calm them down from the situation and give a very simple explanation for why they can't. Okay, so we tend to say, "You know, but I really want a lollipop." No, I said you can't have one. Why? Because I said so. So the child isn't learning that the reason they can't have it is because mum and dad have a different belief about whether lollipops are good or healthy for you or should be eaten half an hour before dinner or not. Okay. But if you are giving them insight into other people's thoughts and feelings about a situation, so that's all helping to develop their theory of mind. But the key is you really need to keep the explanation simple. But if you're not giving them a very simple reason, then that's just going to build their defiance a little bit more as well. So they're more likely to continue their tantrum. By communicating thought processes that seem obvious or automatic to you or me, adults can help kids connect the dots between the invisible thoughts and feelings of others and their actions in the real world. Yeah, so theory of mind is important for social skills. So generally children with better theory of mind like school more, they like being in social situations and they often have more friends, children that become police at school often have a lack of theory of mind. So if you can't read the social situation fully, then you're not going to understand how someone feels when you're picking on them. And so that can facilitate this negative behaviour. So to put it simply, the theory of mind means understanding other people's point of view, which is kind of putting yourself in someone else's shoes and being empathetic. Also the understanding that our actions are controlled by our beliefs and desires. And it's an important developmental accomplishment in young children's lives. Dr. Pratusha Senegavarapu from the School of Education at Western Sydney University has found that before children develop theory of mind, the logic of social interactions is kind of mystifying. They're less likely to display empathy and they might get into more conflicts because they will not be able to understand other people's point of view. Generally they have difficulties paying attention to other people and have difficulty rationalising why people are behaving in certain way, which is very important, isn't it? That ability to be able to understand other people in social situations and in human relationships, that's why a lot of research is going on in this particular area, even though. Having conversations with young children, describing why you're feeling a certain way, or why you made the decision that you did, is really important. It helps kids learn how to decode the complex social world around them. For example, a child is playing or you see a child smiling and you can simply describe that by saying, "Oh, John is smiling, John is playing." But descriptive language includes, like, Sally is smiling because she likes you. John is not happy because he didn't get the toy that he wanted. So through that sort of training, a language training and modeling, children learn to connect the meaning of words with the mental state. Another important thing us parents can do to help develop a child's theory of mind is to read with them. Above the dark savannah five stars glint through the trees, the tall giraffes watch them twinkle in the cool night breeze. When you are reading story books to children, you can talk about the characters in the book and how they're feeling and why they are thinking certain things that they are because of what has happened in the story. So always talking about characters in books is giving them a model or a possible way that the world could be in this sort of situation. How a character might feel if they trip over and hurt their knee, how happy someone would be to get a surprise birthday cake on it birthday. So understanding feelings is a part of the story. of theory of mind as well. Storybooks are an amazing opportunity for children to develop an understanding of different people's perspectives. Their parents got his time for bed. Come on, it's getting late. By following the adventures of their favourite characters, they pick up on the rules and norms of our quite complex social community. Good night, Hippo. Good night, Lam. Children often have a storybook that they love so much that's on rotation. And there can be lots of reasons for that. They just enjoy the story and they like it and they want to hear things that they like a lot. But there might be something interesting about that story that grasps their attention. That book might be helping them understand something about their world, that they're making sense of at the moment. Often the stories that the children like are everyday situations that reflect their understanding of the world. And their cognitive level as well. Developing a theory of mind is a complex process that slowly unfolds throughout a child's early life. And it's behind more complex abilities like being able to see when someone is hiding how they really feel. Right through to the more advanced skill of sarcasm. As kids develop their social understanding, they quickly figure out how to take advantage of their new skills. As their understanding social situations more, then they're able to manipulate it a little bit more. For example, asking mum for one thing and mum said no. And then going to ask dad, because dad doesn't know that mum said no. And so once a child's worked that out, they might be able to milk that a little bit to their advantage. Despite this sometimes challenging behaviour, the more a child understands about how different people might think or react in a certain situation. The better they're going to be able to function and thrive. All kids do this kind of thing. We might not necessarily like that they do it. But it is showing a sophisticated understanding of a social situation. I asked one parent for one thing, they said no. Dad doesn't know mum said no. So I'll go and ask dad. He said yes and now I can do it. So this is a typical situation. I think kids sort of develop this round five, six. According to researchers like Dr. Karen Mattock, play is one of the best tools kids have to experiment and learn about all of this. But how does make the leaf play like using a banana as a telephone actually teach children about the real world? So pretend play or fantasy play is a stepping stone in child's development that fosters theory of my development. And some theorists would even go as far to say that fantasy play may even cause theory of my development that it's that important. So for example, by around 18 months children will start to substitute an object for something else. So you might see them put a bucket on their head as a hat or pick up a notebook and use it as a phone. What they're doing there is that they're beginning to use objects symbolically. So the important distinction there is that there's two realities. So the bucket is the bucket itself, but they can actually substitute that for something else. So they're pretending that it's a hat, for example. And this is really important because it's the beginning of understanding other perspectives and having flexible thinking. So these kinds of flexible thinking skills allow the child to experience what it's like to be in someone else's shoes. And it's important in the real world for understanding the minds of other people. Whether it's playing with other kids at the park or creating worlds with their toys at home. Playing is one of the most educational things that a child can do each day. So pretend play also allows children a safe space to explore language. So it allows them to use terms that are new to them, which they might want to be trying out. So they begin to use terms like I think this teddy believes that mummy is sad because. And so it allows them to reflect on how other people might be feeling. And this helps translate to the real world, helps to build empathy in children as well. Developing language skills and theory of mind are closely related. As Dr. Karen Mattock explains, working with children with autism has allowed researchers to make some really important discoveries about the interrelationship between theory of mind and language development. So children with autism struggle with aspects of language. So they have difficulties with social interaction with others. So they have difficulty taking the perspectives of other people. And this can be a great barrier for social interaction for them. It's also correlated with speech delay in a child. So children with autism are often delayed in spoken language and receptive language. So what they're understanding. So at the heart of autism are these language and communicating difficulties. Through the study of children with autism, we've come to learn just how entwined language and theory of mind skills are in development. So if you're experiencing difficulties with one of those, for example, if you're experiencing difficulties with language, that can lead to difficulties in understanding theory of mind and vice versa. Thanks for listening to BabyLab. That's it for this week. But remember to hit subscribe so you don't miss our next episode. We've been going through all of your questions that you've taken the time to send into us. And in the next episode, we bring you the answers. Don't miss it. If you'd like any more information on the researchers we spoke to in this episode, head to the BabyLab Podcast page at babyology.com. We'll put up more information and links to their work there. And if you're new to podcasting, head to babyology.com and click the podcast page. This info there on how to subscribe and listen to podcasts on your phone, your iPad or even in the car and plenty of other great parenting podcasts that we also think you'd love. BabyLab is produced by Babyology and Western Sydney University. The series is recorded and edited by Caitlin Gibson, Tim Richie was head of podcast and I'm Gemilla Rizvi. We'll catch you again soon. (upbeat music)