one August morning more than 30 years ago a 25-year-old college student peered over the edge of a 29-storey tower overlooking the quadrangle at the University of Texas in Austin, USA. A student of architectural engineering, Charles Whitman was considered a model citizen - a seemingly normal and happily married man who was a former altar boy and the youngest American to become an Eagle Scout. On this morning, however, Whitman had intentions that would later shock the world.
With a cart full of weapons Whitman gunned down 48 people, killing 17 and wounding 31 before he was shot and killed by police and vigilante crossfire. The American public were left wondering what on earth could have driven such a 'normal' man to commit this devastating act of violence. They were even more surprised, however, by the findings of an investigative team established to research Whitman's background. The verdict was very clear - a deprivation of normal play during childhood was a major contributing factor.
What is play deprivation?
Stuart Brown, an American physician-psychiatrist and one of the original Whitman case researchers, suggests that play is a highly crucial process of human engagement that, should it be restricted, can have severe and detrimental consequences for the player. He said, 'I now perceive healthy varied play in childhood as necessary for the development of empathy, social altruism and the possession of a repertoire of social behaviours enabling the player to handle stress, particularly humiliation and powerlessness.'
Brown's main concerns regarding play-deprivation are with the psychosocial well-being of individuals, and as most of his research has been with severe and highly volatile cases, which are fortunately very rare and very extreme, we cannot assume this will be the same for all children who are deprived of play. However, there are some questions we do need to ask. For example, are there variable levels of deprivation, and if so, what would be the likely indicators and consequences for this?
Bob Hughes suggests that a way to measure the intensity of play deprivation is to use a tool such as a 'play deprivation matrix'. The 'matrix' takes what we know about play, such as a range of play types, and equates this against the intensity of deprivation suffered by the child. From this equation a score can be compiled as a rough guide to the severity of deprivation suffered.
While a useful tool, the matrix is at best based on assumptions of what those levels of intensity of play-deprivation could potentially be. For example, the play deprivation of Whitman could be considered as very severe, perhaps scoring very high on the matrix, whereas a child not ever having access to art and craft resources may score very low on the matrix, thus suggesting a standardised measure is required.
Moreover, children either restricted of resources or access to a play environment will still play, as has been noted on many occasions in war-torn countries and where geological disasters have taken place.
Children will play in the rubble of bombed-out buildings even while bombs are still flying overhead. Therefore, any process purporting to measure the severity of play-deprivation would need to be able to account for the environmental context at the time as well as children's 'playful resilience', and often against a socio-cultural backdrop of the most adverse conditions.
A process of this nature would be a complex one indeed, as not only would it need to account for the lack of play, or lack of opportunities to play, it would also have to measure the child's 'resilience' on a very personal perspective - how that child as an individual deals with trauma and/or play-deprivation. Furthermore, play-deprivation could have a culturally significant value, thus an index purporting to measure the severity or intensity of play-deprivation would have to take a global perspective if it is to measure play-deprivation as a global phenomena.
Possible impacts Play Wales defines play deprivation as 'the name given to the notion that not playing may deprive children of experiences that are regarded as developmentally essential and result in those affected being both biologically and socially disabled'.
While a useful starting point it tells us neither what those experiences are, nor in what severity or form the disablement is likely to take. Are we to assume therefore that only those 'experiences regarded as developmentally essential' will be damaging?
Perhaps the difficulty here is not so much the definition per se, as it gives us a baseline to work with, but rather the potential for wide interpretation. We may not consider a smile as something essential for development, yet if it was conditional on a feeling of happiness, which is in turn based on a playful engagement, then at some point along this interconnected process even a smile can support the 'essential' aspects of a child's development.
The point I am making here is that surely all play, on all levels, has some impact on a child's development, whether insignificant or not, therefore any restriction on play at any level must lead to some form of play-deprivation. If you consider the butterfly effect in Chaos Theory, whereby the most minute incidents could have far-reaching consequences, then the 'catalogue' of potential play-deprivation antecedents are enormous.
It is perhaps easy for us to take an extreme and sensationalist perspective on play deprivation as in the case of Whitman. It is also easy for us to argue that: * play is a biological drive and is imperative to a person's survival, so for a child not to play counters their potential for survival * social exclusion and deprivation may have an impact on play. Therefore being poor, or living in a poor community, also equates to a deprivation of play * a life of continuous deprivation of stimuli may result in limited brain growth * if adults continuously control children's play then children will be deprived of 'free-play'
* if a play environment is poorly resourced, or no suitable space is allocated, or children do not access a play environment, then they are again being play-deprived * cultural and societal fears of strangers, or of cars, can lead to multiple forms of play deprivation * schools are shortening their 'play times' in preference of academic pursuits, therefore we have play deprivation en-masse.
All this is familiar. What we are less clear about are the impacts of those day-to-day deprivations of play. Those insignificant and hardly noticeable exchanges and restrictions that potentially, either as an escalated item, or as a collective and continuous set of negative experiences, will have far-reaching and debilitating consequences for the child.
Our understanding of play-deprivation is very limited, perhaps blighted by our still limited understanding of play. But the indicators we have seen so far could be telling us that if we do not take play seriously then many children could be suffering a deprivation of what is not only a given right, but also a 'need' to play. A removal or restriction of play could have an impact on children's lives that will eventually return to haunt them and perhaps, like in the case of Whitman, haunt the rest of society as well.
Philip Waters is a lecturer and researcher in playwork, based in Cornwall
Recommended reading
* Brown, S (1998) Play as an organising principle: clinical evidence and personal observations.
* Bekoff, M and Byers, JA (ed.) Animal Play: Evolutionary, Comparative and Ecological Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Hughes, B (2001) Evolutionary Playwork and Reflective Analytic Practice.
London: Routledge.
* Play Wales (2003) Play Deprivation. Cardiff: Play Wales.
