WEBVTT - Pretend Play, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:12.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:14.280 welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:17.400 My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:20.360 and today we're going to begin a series of episodes 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:25.000 looking at the topic of pretend play. And yes, folks, 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:27.480 this is one of my baby Looked at You topics, 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:31.920 inspired directly by watching my currently two year old daughter's 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:37.680 wonderful and frightening brain become ever more powerful day by day. Lately, 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:42.920 she has been all about pretending. Sometimes it is pretending 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:45.400 to be things. Robert, I can't remember if I told 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:47.720 you about the Christmas Elf. Do you know the Christmas Elf? 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:52.040 Do I know the Christmas self? Well, there are many elves. 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:54.160 This is different than the one on the shelf. This 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:57.360 is so my daughter pretends to be this thing called 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:01.880 the Christmas Elf, which mostly just like makes a grotesque 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:05.160 kind of gargoyle face and dances wildly to black Sabbath. 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:06.360 That's what Christmas elf is. 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:10.320 Okay, well, you're bringing her up right then. That seems 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:13.039 that seems more in keeping with some of the more 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:16.440 archaic forms of elf that we've discussed on the show. 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:19.040 Yeah, I don't know. Knowing me, that may sound like 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:22.160 a trained behavior, but this is just what naturally emerged 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:23.640 from her. I don't know where she got that. That's 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:26.080 what Christmas elf is. She's like data put on Black 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:31.800 Sabbath record, but it runs around, dance into that. And 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.039 then one of the good pretending to be things the 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:39.640 other day was she was she's been playing with some 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:43.480 little little doggies that she got for Christmas, little doggie toys, 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:46.760 and one of them is a bagle, so she you know, 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.120 she likes talking about the beagle and hearing about the beagle. 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:52.840 But she was talking to Rachel the other day and 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:55.280 she I think she was saying wolf wolf and Rachel said, oh, 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:58.080 are you a beagle right now? And she said, no, 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:03.840 tater tot. Very still, I don't know what exactly are 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:06.280 the properties one mimics when being a tater Todd that 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:10.320 I can't fully inhabit that mindset, but I admire the ambition. 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:14.640 Well, I guess it is of the various fried and 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:17.880 or baked potato food products. So it's the tater tots 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:23.240 are the most canine of the bunch, So sure, yeah. 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:24.040 But a lot of it is. So there's a little 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:25.959 bit of pretending to be things. But a lot more 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:28.280 of it is what when we get into the research 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:32.880 later in this episode, is what is sometimes called replica play. 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:36.440 It is pretending with the aid of toys or props, 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:40.560 little agent toys, and making them pretend to do things. 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:43.760 So she's got a bunch of dinosaurs, and she loves 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:47.040 to make her dinosaurs go night night, and then rapidly 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:49.400 wake up and then go night night again, over and 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:53.600 over in like a mind rendingly fast circadian rhythm. She 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:56.679 loves to have our little dinosaurs and creatures eat pizza. 0:02:56.840 --> 0:02:59.680 And there's a lot of discussion of to what extent 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:02.120 there's sharing the pizza or not, or to what extent 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:06.519 they're keeping pieces of pizza to themselves. Sometimes they're eating 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:09.480 things that you can see there's like a physical prop 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.200 for the food. Sometimes they're just eating purely imagine everything. 0:03:12.240 --> 0:03:15.560 So there's cake there that's invisible cake. And then the 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:18.919 past few days she's been into going on a boat 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:21.480 on the couch, which is a book on the couch cushion. 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:23.880 The couch cushion is the water and the book is 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:25.880 the boat, and she puts various things on the boat 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:27.560 and they get on and off the boat and see 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:30.880 things out on the water, and typically they're on a 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:32.440 boat trip to grandparents' house. 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:37.760 Wow. Yeah, it's a magical time. My own child is 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:42.480 twelve going on thirteen now, so a lot of these 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:47.440 really awesome examples of imagination play are in the past now, 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:50.920 but my wife and I certainly look back on them 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:52.680 with a lot of funness, and some of them are 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:56.320 still things we frequently discuss in our you know, day 0:03:56.360 --> 0:04:00.960 to day conversations, even a reference rather. But yeah, I remember, 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:06.640 I remember various antics with these, like old plastic dinosaur 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:09.600 toys from my childhood, and so those would eat those 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:12.720 dinosaurs were always eating things. I can't remember how much 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:14.960 of it was real, how much of it was imagined. 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:17.640 And they wouldn't so much go to sleep as they 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:20.680 would occasionally go extinct. There was some sort of a 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:24.840 cosmic event that would make them all go extinct, but 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:26.760 you know then they'd be back up and running before 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:27.240 too long. 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:31.719 That's intense pretend. Yeah, yeah, facing the realities of nature 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:32.160 head on. 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:34.599 Well, you know, you tell the story of the dinosaurs, 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.120 you gotta tell the beginning, the middle of the end. 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:40.000 Yeah. Look, ma, these are evolving into birds. 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:45.360 Yeah, that's right. Well, we did touch on that aspect 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:48.600 of it too, but we also inevitably or I inevitably 0:04:48.880 --> 0:04:51.080 ended up sort of busting out these sort of childhood 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:53.360 version of dinosaurs that I had growing up, which was 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:57.200 less about the bird thing and more about just catastrophic 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:01.440 fireballs and so forth and exploding volcanoes. We've referenced before that, 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:04.400 like almost all of those old paleo art paleo art 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:08.799 examples from childhood dinosaur books of like the late seventies 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:12.280 and the nineteen eighties, they all had an erupting volcano 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:13.320 in the background, so. 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:15.839 It's actively erupting at the moment. 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:17.960 And it was kind of implied or I always thought like, 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:21.440 that's the end back there. It's what's happening. It's the 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:23.159 end of days for the dinosaurs. 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:25.680 I think it's important to get both visions. Yeah, you know, 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:28.839 you get the long scale evolutionary EON's point of view, 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:32.120 and then you also get the scary part of fantasia 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:32.360 of you. 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:37.480 Yeah. Well, I'm excited about these episodes though, getting into 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.800 imagination play. It's a topic that you know, I think 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:43.680 we've touched on before on the show, at least in passing. 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:46.560 There may be some very old episodes that deal with 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:48.320 some of the issues we're going to bring up here, 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:50.520 But it's going to be nice to really dive into 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:50.880 all of this. 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:53.280 A new yeah, And I'm not sure yet how many 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:54.960 episodes we're going to go to in this series. We're 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:58.120 looking at least two, but maybe three or more if 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.600 the topic takes us there. But this is a rich subject. 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:04.719 There's a lot of scientific research in this area, but 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:08.640 also just a lot of interesting philosophical thought going back centuries. 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:11.520 So there's going to be a lot to get into. 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:14.159 But I thought a good place to start would just 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:19.080 be a good broad sort of overview paper looking at 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:22.640 the subject from a psychology, cognitive science, and child development 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.480 point of view. And I found a good paper in 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:29.680 that regard by Dina Skolnik Weisberg, published in the journal 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:34.719 Cognitive Science in twenty fifteen called Pretend Play and so, Rob, 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:36.359 if you're ready, I thought we should just go ahead 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:38.440 and dive right into this paper and talk about some 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:40.680 of the topics brought up in it, some of the 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:43.120 research covered, and then we can branch out from there. 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:44.280 All right, let's do it. 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:48.960 So we start with definitions. Weisberg defines pretend play as 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:54.120 any playful behavior that involves non literal action, so to paraphrase, 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:57.080 play that operates on the premise of a thing or 0:06:57.120 --> 0:07:01.760 situation being other than what it literally is. So there 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:05.000 are types of play that are not pretend to play. 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:07.159 You can think of a game of tag or a 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:10.600 game of kickball. This is clearly play, but it's not 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:12.920 really pretend to play because what you're I mean, you 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:17.400 could imagine versions that involve pretend elements, but at the baseline, 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:19.800 this is a game that is taken literally. What the 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:23.800 children mostly think they're doing is playing the literal game. 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:26.560 Yeah, yeah, like a game of kickball is just a 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:30.160 game of kickball unless you do what I do distinctly 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:34.240 remember doing when I was a kid, is pretending that 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:38.320 kickball with some sort of like sci fi gladiatorial combats anario, 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.280 you know, and imagine kids are probably doing some molre 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:44.000 things today, like imagining it's squid games, and so I 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:48.120 guess it depends on the age, but you know, dreaming 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:50.600 it up a little bit, adding that layer of imagination 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:51.880 on top of it. 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:56.600 I recall specifically doing this with tag because I enjoyed 0:07:56.680 --> 0:07:58.680 playing tag a lot, and my friends and I in 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:02.280 elementary school age played tag, but I remember I would 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:05.360 spice it up mentally, sometimes with the cooperation of others 0:08:05.440 --> 0:08:09.200 or maybe just in my own mind, by imagining myself 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:13.320 and other players as characters from movies I liked in 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:16.520 the context of tag. So like, I just saw the 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:20.960 movie Anaconda starring Ice Cube and Jenni Phi Lopez, you know, 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:24.679 and and I am now pretending to be this character 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:27.160 from Anaconda as we play tag. You know, I was 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:30.120 probably that was probably too mature of a movie for 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:30.880 me at that point. 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:34.240 But we need to come back to Anaconda on a 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:35.240 weirdest cinema. 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:37.480 By the way, it's it's so good, one of the 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:43.360 most unhinged performances of all time John Voyd in that movie. 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:46.040 All right, right, so I think everybody gets where we're 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:48.400 going with this. Yeah, it's like there's like basically like 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:52.040 pure sport is not imaginative. 0:08:52.800 --> 0:08:54.600 And then there are other kinds of play that once 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:57.960 again could break down either way. So building with blocks 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.480 could be pretend to play on how you're playing, but 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:04.440 it isn't necessarily you might just be building with blocks. 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:07.760 And so sometimes when I build with blocks with my daughter, 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:10.959 the impression I get is that it's just about building 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:13.160 with blocks. You know, she wants to build a big tower, 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:16.600 make a bunch of blocks. But if you think about 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:19.400 it as we are building a skyscraper and there are 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:21.839 going to be people living inside it and so forth, 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:23.360 then I guess it is pretend play. 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:27.160 Yeah, Like you get into some of the bigger kid 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:30.640 uses of Legos. For example, I remember doing this, and 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:33.720 I've seen my child do this as well, where you 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:37.720 are really almost creating an imaginative fetish item out of 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:40.480 the out of the blocks. You know, it's some sort 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:43.360 of a character or a creature or you know, in 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:45.360 my case it was often some sort of a robot 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:49.640 or a mech suit, you know, whatever the case may be. 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:54.240 And it is about connecting blocks together and building something, 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:57.319 making a form. But then you were like filling that 0:09:57.400 --> 0:09:59.680 form with more meaning via your imagination. 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:03.400 Yeah, exactly. But okay, so here's where like clear pretend 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:06.960 play comes in. When my child picks up an old 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:10.120 DVD player remote control that we took the batteries out 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:13.199 of and holds it up to her ear and says 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.520 that she is calling her grandmother on the phone, that's 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:20.400 definitely pretend to play. At some level, she knows the 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:24.040 remote is not a phone, and you know, Nana does 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:26.960 not talk back to her, but she likes to pretend 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:28.480 and thinks it's very funny. 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:32.319 Yes, yes, my child also did a lot of phone 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:36.880 pretend play as well, picking up various items, remote controls, blocks, 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:38.520 what have you, pretending their phones. 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:40.800 So that's a pretty clear case. Coming back to more 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:43.679 ambiguous cases. Oh, one that I think is huge is 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:47.320 like play fighting. Play fighting could be non pretend to play. 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:49.560 It could be understood as just literally a form of 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:53.880 kind of free form wrestling competition between children or kids 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:57.240 engaging in play fighting might be assuming the non literal 0:10:57.280 --> 0:10:59.359 form of characters and a scenario. 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:05.040 Yeah, my mind here instantly goes to lightsaber fighting because 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:09.480 my own child did a lot of this and it 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:12.679 took different forms. Right, Because if you're gonna pretend to 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:17.000 fight with lightsabers, you can have a full like official 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:20.679 lightsaber toy with an extendable plastic cone that serves as 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:24.880 the blade of the lightsaber or laser sort if you will. 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:28.480 And but then you then you can have just a 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.880 pre made hilt that you're pretending there is a light 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:36.959 blade emanating from you can do what my child did 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:41.040 and take foil like roll of foil, roll of saran 0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:46.200 wrap tubes, little cardboard tubes, dress those up as lightsaber hilts, 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:48.439 and then you're fighting with those, pretending again that the 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:50.560 blade is there. Or you can do what I think 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:53.640 a lot of kids do, is you just pretend the 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:56.199 hilt is there as well, so I can draw a 0:11:56.280 --> 0:12:00.400 lightsaber right now and just go and you know, you 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:02.800 know exactly what I have in my hand, and you 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:05.800 can engage in battles, and so they are like different 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:10.160 levels of having any kind of like actual physical property 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:11.200 there to play off off. 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:13.440 Yeah, that's right. So you can imagine there's sort of 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:17.800 different levels of extension of the imagination depending on what 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:22.240 physical props you're using, or how far away the situation 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:26.280 or scenario or object you're imagining is from the physical reality. 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:29.959 So you know, there's a sort of greater imaginative leap 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.920 involved in taking a paper towel tube and saying that's 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:38.000 a lightsaber than holding like a toy painted up to 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:40.600 look like a real lightsaber and saying that's a real lightsaber. 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:43.880 Both involve some imagination, but one kind of is a 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:46.200 bigger leap and then it's even a bigger leap to 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:49.400 take nothing at all. Just you know, you're completely imagining 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:53.160 the presence of a prop in any case, and say 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:54.720 that's the lightsaber. 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:56.920 And then is it me with the lightsaber to your point? 0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:00.200 Or am i obi wan? Am i anakin? Yeah? And 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:02.600 so forth. So yeah, there's so many different levels of 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:05.199 the imagination to employ here. 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:17.640 So the purpose of this review by Weisberg was to 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:21.040 define pretend play, to differentiate it from other types of 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:23.400 playful activities, and then to kind of look at ways 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:27.400 that pretend to play fits into the development of various 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:32.280 cognitive and social skills in childhood. And since pretend play 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.040 seems to involve many of the same mental structures as 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:42.160 complex adult capacities like counterfactual reasoning, theory of mind, symbolic understanding, 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:45.000 and so forth, looking at pretend to play really could 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:47.960 help us better understand many aspects of the brain and 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.800 the mind. So this review in particular looks at the 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:56.360 relationship between pretend play and symbolic understanding, theory of mind, 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.560 and counterfactual reasoning. I think we might save at least 0:13:59.600 --> 0:14:02.480 one of those. I think the deeper exploration of theory 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:04.640 of mind for part two, because that gets into a 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:06.640 lot of other stuff. But I'm going to try to 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:10.600 talk about symbolic understanding and counterfactual reasoning today. But the 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:14.120 author kicks things off by trying to define and characterize 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:17.640 pretend to play itself. Now, even going back a step, 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:21.960 not just pretend to play, but play as a concept, 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:25.880 has proven notoriously difficult for researchers. There's like a whole 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:31.280 literature arguing over what play is, what definition best captures 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:33.520 the essence of play, What do we mean when we 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:37.280 call something play, Which types of edge cases count and 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:41.360 which do not. So play is just extremely variable from 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:45.520 child to child, across different cultures. Different people look at 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:47.880 the same activity and say that is play. No, that's 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:50.440 not play. So there's really no way to draw a 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:53.920 clean boundary around this concept that everybody's going to accept. 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:56.840 You will just have to sit with the fact that 0:14:56.880 --> 0:14:58.680 some people are going to say, no, I don't agree 0:14:58.680 --> 0:14:59.760 that that's what play. 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:02.560 Is, right, And this is going to kind of continue 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:06.520 through our whole analysis of pretend play, because there's going 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:08.120 to be a lot of going back and forth. Well, 0:15:08.160 --> 0:15:10.800 while some researchers say this classifies as such and such 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:14.080 and others disagree. Yeah, it just depends how you tease 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:14.440 it apart. 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:17.240 Yes, that's certainly the case. I mean, we are in 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:20.200 the higher order sciences. We're more in the realm of 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:22.840 psychology and cognitive science and a lot of things. They're 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:25.520 just not as clean as they are in chemistry. Now, 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:28.880 one of the main criteria that seems to be common 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:32.880 to definitions of play is that it is what Weisberg 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:38.680 calls non instrumental activity, meaning it has no immediate goal 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:44.160 or purpose other than enjoyment. So you might actually enjoy 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:48.000 something that is not play. Maybe you enjoy splitting logs 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:51.880 into firewood. But even if you do, most people would 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:55.480 not think of splitting wood as play because it has 0:15:55.640 --> 0:16:00.600 an immediate functional goal. It's about transforming resources into a 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:03.640 more usable form. So even if I don't know, you 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:06.320 bring a spirit of playfulness to your log splitting and 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:09.400 you really enjoyed the activity, most people don't look at 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:10.640 that and say that is play. 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:15.120 This is really interesting to think about this distinction, because 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:17.960 you know, I catch myself as what I like to 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:21.920 think is a pretty pro play adult, rationalizing that some 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:25.800 of my hobbies like many painting, for instance, rationalizing it 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:28.160 on the basis that, well, this is going to result 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:32.360 in something that can be utilized in another activity, generally 0:16:32.400 --> 0:16:36.200 a social activity, and therefore it's not like there's not 0:16:36.280 --> 0:16:38.800 this huge sunk cost to it, you know, it's not 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:41.800 a big waste of time, which you know, there's a 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:44.200 lot of false thinking and all of that, I think. 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.760 And likewise, yeah, you know, I've often thought about, or 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:49.600 at least I've thought about this more over the last 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:52.840 ten years or so, about how, you know, especially in 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:56.000 a very capitalist society, I think a lot of us 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:59.440 end up buying into this corrupting notion that if we're 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:01.200 good at some thing, if we or even if we 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:04.080 just enjoy something, if it brings us pleasure, well, then 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:07.439 shouldn't we be generating some profits off of our love 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:10.320 or our talent or what have you? You know, And 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:12.240 I should add the caveat you know, and there's nothing, 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:14.679 absolutely nothing wrong with turning your passion, your hobby, your 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:18.000 talent into a career or a side hustle making a 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:19.919 few bucks off of it here and there, even if 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:22.880 you're just sort of paying for part of that hobby. Certainly, yeah, 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:26.760 go wild. But we should also feel free to play 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:30.000 without having to deal with this inner voice saying, well, 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:33.480 you're not good enough at it unless you can somehow 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:37.560 transition that fun over into a profit. You know that 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:42.080 that any time spent having fun, anytime spent playing, is 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:45.359 like just wasted time. You know, it's okay to engage 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:48.480 in passions that pay only in fun, you know, or 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:52.440 maybe socialization. And this is a huge one for me too, 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:56.960 that I distinctly remember somebody sharing this with me several 0:17:57.000 --> 0:17:59.840 years back, that you know, it's okay not to be 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:02.440 perfect at your passions and hobbies. You know, I think 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:05.200 a lot of times, like without even thinking about, without 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:08.399 even rationalizing that like out loud in our or or 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:10.959 you know, at a higher level of consciousness, you know, 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:13.440 we still sort of buy into this idea that it's like, well, 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:16.280 I'm a grown up. If I'm doing if I'm engaging 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:18.720 in play, well then can I turn this into a business? 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:21.680 Can I make it? You know? Can I somehow rationalize 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:25.560 it through the almighty dollar so that that ends up 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:28.880 being how far removed we are, as often are as 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:32.080 adults from like the pure childhood essence of play. 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:36.119 Yeah, I fully agree with all that. In fact, you know, 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:39.080 people you may have heard some version of this advice before. 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:42.760 But I would go against the grain with with people 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:44.639 who say, you know, find a way to get paid 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:47.760 for doing what you love, or you know, it's like, 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:50.840 take your passion and turn that into a job, because 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:54.040 that may mean that every day you get to do 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:56.479 what you love, or it may mean that what is 0:18:56.520 --> 0:18:59.000 something that you used to love just gets turned into 0:18:59.000 --> 0:18:59.400 a chore. 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:03.120 Yeah. Yeah, and you know, certainly you hear stories about 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:08.480 people who seem perfectly content with turning their passion into 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:11.040 their job. But you also hear plenty of stories about 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:13.600 people who have the reverse situation, or the thing that 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:16.760 you still love has now become the thing they have 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:17.640 to do every day. 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:20.040 So yeah, I guess nobody can figure it out for 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:22.360 you whether that's going to be true in your case 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:25.320 or not. So you'll just have to experiment, but be 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:26.840 aware that that does happen. 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:29.760 But this is not a problem that the children. 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:33.840 Have correct though. I do want to stress while we're 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:37.680 here that though we most often associate play with childhood, 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:39.399 I think I've said on the show before that I 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.720 think play is the work of childhood. When children are playing, 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:47.160 they're doing their job. It does extend through the entire lifespan. 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:49.440 I mean, it's clear that even adults going all throughout 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:53.080 the lifetime engage in different types of play. There are games, 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:57.720 there's word play, construction play, role playing of various kinds. 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:01.000 So you know it doesn't stop after childhood, but clearly 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:06.240 childhood is the most intensive period of play in life. Now, 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:10.919 pretend play specifically has an extended definition that takes it 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:16.560 beyond just play generally, and Weisberg summarizes it as follows quote, 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:22.400 pretend play crucially involves some form of representation or acting 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:26.040 as if such that the behaviors or actions that take 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:29.639 place in a pretend game are not meant to literally 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:33.840 reflect reality. So there is some extent to which what 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:37.800 happens in pretend play is understood by the people playing 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:42.040 to not be literally real. Now, there are a lot 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:46.200 of different types of pretend play, and I got interested 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:50.680 in the taxonomy of these play These almost like family 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:55.919 trees of play type. And one that is very familiar 0:20:55.960 --> 0:21:01.480 to most people is object substitution pretend. This is treating 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:05.200 one object as if it were another. So we already 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:08.119 mentioned the remote control is a telephone. It can't actually 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:10.160 place calls, but you hold it up to your head, 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:12.439 you say hello, you say ring ring, you pretend to 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:14.120 call your grandmother whatever. 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:16.920 Another one that I have to mention is, of course 0:21:16.960 --> 0:21:20.760 stick is a gun. This one. I remember encountering this 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:24.480 one a lot on the playground. Generally, you'd have like 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:28.919 one group of children in my recollection, you know, playing peacefully, 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:31.320 doing something cute, and then here come another band of 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:33.639 children and they have sticks, and then they start firing 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:37.200 sticks as if they are guns. Always a hot discussion 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:41.480 on parenting forums. So get ready for that one, Joe. 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:44.040 Yeah, I know that's coming. But at the same time, 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:46.200 I don't want I mean, I'm not thrilled about the 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:48.080