Early Childhood Development: Negative Aspects of Play

By: Kitrina Fex

While most people think of play as fun, healthy and happy, there are aspects of play that can have negative impacts on early childhood development. At this stage of development, most of the negativity comes through the process of socialization and more specifically, from a child’s parent(s). At this age, parents are the primary source of socialization, so any form of play or interaction will come from them for quite sometime. Hutchison (2008, p. 154-155) believes that through play, a child develops the motor skills essential for physical development, learns the problem-solving skills and communication skills necessary for cognitive development and express the feelings and gain self-confidence needed for emotional growth. As you can see, play impacts a child’s entire being.

Play has a major impact on a child’s self-image. As part of a child’s socialization process, it is not just important how a child plays, but what that child plays with (Ostovich, 2010). Providing a child with toys that do not reflect their own image may create confusion regarding self-image. Since play has a great deal of impact on a child’s self image (Hutchison, 2008, p. 154), it would be of value to all children to be able to play with toys that are a good representation of that specific child.  Toys that are sold perpetuate a very strong status quo and support the norms within our society. Children are heavily influenced by the toys they play with, and in turn, can develop a stark image of themselves and how they should appear.  (video courtesy of www.youtube.com)

Socialization during this stage predominantly assists in developing our society’s definition of gender and from that, how each child plays and what that child will play with. From birth children are categorized into males and females. When boys are given toys, it is usually something associated with gender such as a G.I. Joe. Since self-image is partially developed through play, what a child plays with is very important. If you compare G.I. Joe’s muscle on the doll now versus 30 years ago, there is a tremendous change in size and muscle definition. If you were to proportion the doll to that of a human male, the males biceps would measure 26.5 inch thick (see YouTube video). This is an issue because the average male’s bicep is 13 inches (Joanisse, 2010a). This informs these children that this is what men look like and if you do not look like this, something is wrong with you and you must do whatever you need to do, to look just like it. The same situation is posed for a female child. She most likely would be given a doll, more specifically, Barbie. Barbie is the embodiment of gender stereotypes (Joanisse, 2010b). Barbie portrays an unrealistic image of woman that in real life does not exist. As you will see in the video and picture below, if Barbie’s measurements were proportioned on an actual woman, that woman would not be able to walk and her body would be extremely warped. These toys can do so much more harm than good.  Other toys split gender in the sense that most girl activities and toys are inside indicating that girls are to be quiet and contained whereas boys activities and toys are mostly played outside and indicate that are to be active and wild. The negative impact of this is that toys and types of play foster different traits and abilities in children—depending on the child’s sex (Joanisse, 2010c).

This video discusses G.I. Jones evolution

This video is a catchy song about all that 

is wrong with Barbie, enjoy!

A 45th anniversary doll that was proposed.
A true representation of an aging Barbie

While our group was putting this blog together, the most salient conflict in creating it was being able to completely separate the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects from each other. We found that no matter what area we looked at, the other three areas had some form of impact.

  

Works Cited

Hutchison, E. (2008). Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.

 

Joanisse, L. (2010a, November 22-23). Health and embodiment. McMaster University: SOCIOL 2Q06: Sociology of Gender.

Joanisse, L. (2010b, November 2). Agents of gender socialization: the family . McMaster University: SOCIOL 2Q06: Sociology of Gender.

Joanisse, L. (2010c, November 2). Agents of gender socialization: the family . McMaster University: SOCIOL 2Q06: Sociology of Gender.

Ostovich, J. (2010, October 25). Cognitive development. McMaster University: PSYCH 2AA3: Survey of Child Development.

Videos are all courtesy of www.YouTube.com