Playing for Health and Well-Being in the Early Years
Just as it nurtures children’s holistic development (Hewes, n.d.), play helps to foster children’s health and well-being throughout childhood and beyond (Brown, 2009; Whitaker & Tonkin, 2021). Similarly, play provides children with a supportive context to develop life skills such as self-regulation and resilience, as well as cope with stress and severe and prolonged adversity (Solis et al., 2020).
Among children, play is intimately connected to health and well-being. In fact, play researcher Stuart Brown (2010) suggests that “the opposite of play is not work — the opposite of play is depression” (p. 126).