Emotional Goodies

I just watched a rather inspiring video about the importance of children playing.  The focus wasn't as much on statistics (although they did use a few), but on the psychology of what playing does for children.  One of the doctors(?) shared the idea that playing develops emotional goodies in children that they use to cope with things/situations later in life.

I wanted to share a couple quotes from the video:

Each child needs to develop...

"The capacity to love, to be in a reciprocal relationship with respect and all that.

"The capacity to do some sort of work, meaningful work and work that also gives back to other people.

"Then the capacity to play."

With sharing these quotes, I am not calling out to the social ills or practices in society that I do not condone, but rather pointing out the ideas that made me really think (and that I do agree with).  A lot of my thinking is naturally turned to how the capacity to love and to do meaningful work is developed in children.  Also, to if I am giving enough--and not too much--opportunity and time to my children playing.

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"A huge part of success is happiness.  And a huge part of success is creativity."

First of all, do I model creativity for my children?  Granted, I spend some time "creating" and maintaining a home as a safe and spiritual haven where they will feel love and grow and develop healthy personalities and good citizenship.  But what about the skills and talents I have been given?  Do they see me creating, involved in the creative process of trying and failing and succeeding in adding beauty and ingenuity to the world around me--my world?  Not that I am perfectionistic in making everything look perfect, but am I taking the effort to beautify and add good to the world?  And do I allow those efforts to satisfy my thirst to create?  That brings me more success than bewailing my woes from attempts at finding the right website that I'm searching for.

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"It takes a village to raise a child, but it needs to be a functional village."

How important are the influences and atmospheres that we place our children in!  Even as I often feel the tendency to do, I cannot be with each child in every experience in his life!  And I should not.  The video stresses the importance of creating that safe environment--safe from the world's evils and safe from the controls of thinking inside the box.  If we are not able to control all of the situations that our children are in, are we taking advantage of the valuable time we spend with them to teach them to find and choose the good?

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For those of you still reading, I would imagine you're curious to see this video, so I am providing the link:

VIDEO

I would love to hear your thoughts on some of these ideas.

(I hope that it is okay to pull out the quotes that I liked since I did cite the source where I found them.)