Do We Need Checklists for Children’s Play?

Nathan Holbert:

Welcome to Pop Off. A new segment from Pop and Play where we take a few minutes every few weeks to chat about play, learning about pop culture. And we do it as it's related to topics that are currently in the public conversation. I'm your host, Nathan Holbert, and with me is the incomparable Haeny Yoon.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Thank you. No applause. Hi. Our idea of Pop Off is really to these short segments or little bits about what's happening just in the public conversation right now. But we thought that since some of you might miss us as we're working on season five, that these short bits will help us to ramp up to what we think is going to be an amazing season.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yes. Pop and Play season five coming this spring.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

 

Nathan Holbert:

In the meantime though, I believe Haeny had something she wanted to talk about. So Haeny, pop off.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Thank you. Okay, so my beef right now is with these back to school checklists. So since lots of us are in the rows of really beginning of the school year, I thought that I would talk about some of these checklists. So you know what I mean, like 10 things that your toddler needs to do to be good at preschool. Or I know your son's in middle school, so it could be, here are six books that you absolutely have to read before your kid comes.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, I know those lists. They make me feel like a terrible parent all the time.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, completely inadequate. Therefore, every parent is basically inadequate.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yes.

 

Haeny Yoon:

But I realize that there is a market for checklists about play.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Wow.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. And so I thought this would be an amazing topic for us, Nathan.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yea, nothing says play better than checklists.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Like a checklist. Exactly. Check, check, check, check, check. Okay, so I came across a checklist from a self-proclaimed parenting expert. She actually signed it parenting expert to protect her identity. I decided to call her Savvy Sue.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Savvy Sue, all right.

 

Haeny Yoon:

She gives you advice on how to evaluate your toddler's toys during play to see if you're ready for school. And honestly okay, I don't think parents are thinking that hard about what toys they are buying their kids, are they?

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yes, they actually are.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Oh, sorry. That's your research.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Well, yeah. No, I've had a lot of parents ask me questions about which toys am I supposed to buy for my kids. And I'm always like, whatever ones they want to play with.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, exactly.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Some parents definitely do worry about this.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. Okay, so here are some questions that she has that she used to look at the toys. What is my child learning? What experiences will they have by touching this? What part of their imagination is this stimulating? How is this improving their dexterity? What's the message I'm giving my toddler as they play with this? So what do you think the overarching message of all of these questions are?

 

Nathan Holbert:

Every act of play must have some really important purpose that's not play.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yes, exactly. And I think that's always my beef with play, is that we spend all this time talking about how it can be a lot of different things, that it gives kids and young people a sense of agency, and then we deduce it to something like learning where not that kids can't learn from play. I think we both agree that kids can learn from play, but that not everything has to have that intended purpose. So there's one piece of advice that I did want to highlight, which I think is hilarious. So you tell me, Nathan, how this will work out in your life.

 

Nathan Holbert:

All right, I'm ready.

 

Haeny Yoon:

So parents are really busy and she talks about how you need to really give your kid attention, and focus and all that stuff. And so if they come and ask you for something, instead of saying in a minute, you say for a minute. So you go and do it for a minute.

 

Nathan Holbert:

But only for one minute.

 

Haeny Yoon:

That's right, for one minute. But then she says something magical happens. That when you do it, you're going to realize how amazing it is and you're going to be there for more than a minute.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yes.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Simple.

 

Nathan Holbert:

It's that easy. Parenting, it's that easy.

 

Haeny Yoon:

It's that easy, yeah. And she says a thing about how this is not about you, it's about them. Perennial.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. Obviously, how much did she charge for this advice?

 

Haeny Yoon:

I don't know. I have no idea.

 

Nathan Holbert:

[inaudible 00:04:34] easy.

 

Haeny Yoon:

That's the thing, I think parents and educators and all kinds of people, teachers, should be aware that a lot of checklist, education curriculum is also about the market. And so for us to not think about these things critically would be a mistake.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. And obviously the problem isn't... Listen, parents want to spend time with their kids and they want also their kids to be developing productively and successfully. So we know we're supposed to spend time with them. That's not the hard part, the hard part isn't, when my child asks me to do something should I do it? We all know the answer is yes. And also we know that sometimes when you do it, you do have fun, but sometimes you don't. And sometimes the reason you say in a minute or maybe later is because-

 

Haeny Yoon:

You don't really want to do it.

 

Nathan Holbert:

You don't want to do it

 

Haeny Yoon:

Later is never. Later is a code word. Okay, your point is exactly the Reddit thread that I found about this, because here's my issue with the checklist and with her advice, is that it definitely shames parents. It tells them to ignore their own self-worth and value, because I think a lot of times, even as teachers or parents you're like, oh, you're supposed to sacrifice to do all this stuff for them. But the problem is, if you don't feel fulfilled too in that, or if you're always sacrificing then what? Your battery's going to be low. So what are you going to do with that? I feel like that diminishes every individual's feelings and emotions. And then it takes the most important thing about play and reduces it to learning obviously. But in this Reddit thread where one parent is basically talking about playing with their toddler and the subject was like, I don't really know how to play with my toddler.

And she's like, "When he was a baby, it was really easy because you don't do anything."

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, they just kind of like sleep and poop and eat.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, and they get amused by everything. And she's like, now I have to do everything. And so she says at the end, "But here's the thing, I get so ridiculously bored, there I said it. I want to clean the house and the garage and maybe just sit and knit row." And so I think about these checklists and I actually found one online. I used it to evaluate how good of a role player I am, because last season we played role playing games and it was no secret that I had struggled a lot in many of these settings. And so this play checklist basically is like there's a hierarchy. So for instance, pretending with objects either does not use the object to pretend, uses real objects, substitutes objects for other objects, uses imaginary objects. And I'm kind of like, no, don't like any of these objects so I will not use any of them.

 

Nathan Holbert:

So you failed.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, I don't know. So what I'm trying to say is, it really depends on context. It depends on where you are. Hierarchies of expertise in play is often really simplistic. And that different scenarios call for different purposes and that play is not really uniform. Sometimes I like to play alone, sometimes I don't. Sometimes two or three people is good. Sometimes 700 people is good, I don't know. Actually 700 people is never good.

 

Nathan Holbert:

That's a lot.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, it's never good. So I just feel like there's so many different ways that someone could demonstrate that they have this. And I think it really marginalized kids who don't play in this typical way,

 

Nathan Holbert:

Right. If they don't adhere to the checklist, is it good or bad? And that also causes then the person who's doing the checking on the checklist to look at the player in a way that is not productive and healthy at all. Like if you're constantly checking in to see if your kid has clicked the right boxes, you're not actually spending time with them, you're not actually engaging with them, you're not actually enjoying that minute that you gave them.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. So again, okay, I'm not saying that checklists are bad. Don't at me and talk about how I disowned every checklist known to man. I feel like they're useful and they're an organizing factor and some of that. But I think about what can you do instead of that?

 

Nathan Holbert:

Right. Yeah, so what should we do differently? So let's throw out the checklist. What should we be doing to help us play with our kids?

 

Haeny Yoon:

So in the spirit of having a real solution.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, that's what we want to try to do when we're popping off, we don't want to just pop off, right?

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yes. Although popping off is also fun.

 

Nathan Holbert:

It's also fun.

 

Haeny Yoon:

I have one sort of abstract, a solution that leads to one practical solution.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Okay, I like that.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Okay. So Henry Jenkins in 1998, here's what he wrote. He wrote, "We need to think about our roles as parents, teachers, and citizens in ways that help us to prepare children to participate in the process of social change and political transformation." Don't you love that.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I do love that.

 

Haeny Yoon:

But basically it's to the idea of trusting your children and partly an argument for why we avoid overly didactic checklists, because it diminishes what we think play might be. But also the assumption under any social transformation or a shift or change means it's different than what we've imagined before, Nathan. And I feel like what a checklist does is it makes you put someone into a box of things that people have already done.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Right.

 

Haeny Yoon:

I think one of the things that we want to get through to people is that play kind of engenders a new kind of imagining, something that we never thought of. So here's my practical solution. Okay, and this is not to shame anybody. Nobody has to do this so I'm not going to check up on this.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I will try not to feel shame as you speak. Go.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. So if you're going to do something practical, I would say each day you either write, record or write down one thing that surprised you, delighted you, or troubled you from your children's play

 

Nathan Holbert:

Of your child's play, interesting. I think that's a good idea. I think there's a component to this which is inviting parents to still be reflective about what their children are playing with. You're not entirely throwing out the idea that you should just give a kid an iPad and walk away from them. Here you're saying like, no, still engage, still pay attention, still participate. But then also come back to it and think about what it was that you observed, what it was that you did. And I like that. It's a good idea.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. And I think within the thinking with trouble is kind of a good... Like what's troubling or makes you uncomfortable, sometimes we don't have to react right away. I think that's kind of good advice for teachers too, is that I think a lot of times when I was teaching I was very compelled to just react right away. And my reaction right away would be not good.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Shut it down.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Exactly. But I think there is something with sitting with the trouble and kind of thinking about what this means and what it does, and maybe it'll kind of make you think about something else.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. And you can also ask the child to think about those three questions too. That's always kind of fun.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. I like it. Well man, what a great inaugural pop off.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Pew pew.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Is that our sound?

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, that is not our sound. I'm just joking.

 

Nathan Holbert:

All right. Before you leave, please take a minute if you have it, to complete a brief survey. You can find a link to the survey in our show notes. We would love to hear what you like and love about past seasons of Pop and Play. We'd also like to know what you'd like to see us do differently for future seasons. We're currently working on season five of Pop and Play, and we'd love your input. And wherever you're listening to this podcast, please try to also subscribe, leave a rating, and leave some comments. And while you're in the middle of all of those homework assignments that we've given you, one last homework assignment is to please share your favorite Pop and Play episodes with your friends. We'd love to expand the pop or not audience. My mom is getting a little lonely being the only listener of this show. So share with all your friends.

 

Haeny Yoon:

We Love you, Debbie.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Love you, Debbie.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Bye.