Childhood games can help grown-ups 'play the stress away'

At a particularly low point in my adulthood — a classic break-up coupled with a drama at work — I tried to remember the last time I was happy. Actually happy. I realised that I couldn't even grasp what happiness felt like any more.

I stretched my memory back to the last time I felt a semblance of the feeling and landed all the way back in my childhood. So, I went out about bought a PlayStation 3 and a giant Lego pirate ship and found the joy I used to have in these games and toys was still there beneath the surface, hiding in the recesses of a simpler time when being happy didn't feel so complicated.

According to a new study by Lego, I'm not the only one who's going down this nostalgia-driven path to de-stressing. Nearly eight out of 10 adults stated that play reminds them of simpler times and happy memories from their childhood. When asked what they miss most about being a child, the answer is play and having fewer responsibilities.

“It's perceived that for adults, play is an unproductive, frivolous or pointless act,” says Kate Dodd, an HPCSA-registered Art Therapist. “In my experience where play, creativity and imagination are inherent to my practice, I find that to be untrue. Not only is it through creative play and imagination that a child learns, is able to self-regulate, process emotion, find enjoyment and socialise, the same applies to adults. There's a lot of research to support this.”

The Lego Play Well Study was conducted between May and June this year. In the end, the 15-minute online quantitative survey was taken by 18,435 adults — 1,048 of whom were South African — who answered questions that ranged from, “Thinking about the last year, how often has stress impacted the following aspects of your life?” to “What, if anything, prevents you from doing more childhood activities/games?”

The study found that adults are overwhelmed. One out of two admit that stress affects key aspects of their life and that they struggle to relax. As a result, the study found that the majority dream of escaping their everyday life. And yet the data showed that we find unwinding hard. Most adults spend time researching how to destress, yet only few spend time actually distressing, and three out of 10 who do figure out how to relax only spend five hours a week doing so.

“With the stress, seriousness and responsibility that life often holds for adults, the activity of play becomes neglected,” says Dodd. “Along with the false idea that this activity is for the realm of childhood. Adults often believe they don't have time or they carry self-doubt and judgment, which inhibits the opportunity to be spontaneous and playful.”

One of the standout findings in the Lego study shows that adults abstain from play for fear of being judged. One out of every two believe that it's not socially acceptable for adults to play. Furthermore, few describe themselves as very creative (27%) and 70% feel that others have more creative confidence than they do. In fact, one in two (54%) held back on pursuing their dreams because of a lack of creative confidence.

“Many adults, due to Ltd views about creativity at school, were made to believe that they weren't creative,” says artist, educator and “play facilitator” Anthea Moys. She echoes the beliefs of Sir Ken Robinson who in his Ted talk Do Schools Kill Creativity states that “We don't grow into creativity we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it.”

When Moys was a resident artist and researcher at Lego Foundation in 2017, she found that learning through play was often about unlearning what we were taught in school. "'I can't draw' is a common one,” she says. “Once it is named, we can bring humour into our beliefs and unlearn them so that we can tell ourselves a different story: 'Sure my drawing isn't a Michaelangelo, but there are many ways to be creative and I can draw — in my own way!'”

So how do we start playing away the stress? Start small, get one of those colouring-in books, buy a strategic board game, or build Lego — like I did. Their new art and architecture sets that double up as relaxation and décor are a good place to start. But find a way of playing that connects you to the ways in which you like to unwind — be that free play, something spontaneous, following a set of rules or instructions or doing a puzzle.
Start with one hour at a time, until you get to that all important five hours and more per week.

“In the current sociopolitical climate, there's much unlearning to do,” says Moys. “I think engaging play, humour and failure can help us with this process so that we can reimagine ways of being in the world and 'rewrite the script'.”