{"id":1136,"date":"2008-03-04T08:44:14","date_gmt":"2008-03-04T16:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2008\/03\/some_arts_leaders_could_use_th\/"},"modified":"2008-03-04T08:44:14","modified_gmt":"2008-03-04T16:44:14","slug":"some_arts_leaders_could_use_th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/some_arts_leaders_could_use_th.php","title":{"rendered":"Some arts leaders could use this kind of play"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting series on NPR explored the structure, purpose, and benefits of various forms of play among young children (more on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=19212514\">Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=76838288\">Creative Play Makes for Kids in Control<\/a>, including audio of the stories, available on-line). The premise is that structured playtime, and highly specialized toys, do less to develop essential cognitive and self-control functions than creative and imaginative play. Says the overview:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><br \/>\nIt turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.<br \/>\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s a useful counterbalance to our frequent impulse to promote self-organizing skills through highly organized tasks (an error that many managers make with their own staff and board leadership, by the way). One of the particular mechanisms that extract self-organizing benefit from creative play, says the story, is by promoting &#8221;private speech&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><br \/>\nAccording to [psychology professor Laura] Berk, one reason make-believe is such a powerful tool for building self-discipline is because during make-believe, children engage in what&#8217;s called private speech: They talk to themselves about what they are going to do and how they are going to do it.<br \/>\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I wonder how many arts organizations serving young children are managing this balance in their programming. And I <i>also<\/i> wonder how many grown-up cultural managers bring this perspective to the workplace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting series on NPR explored the structure, purpose, and benefits of various forms of play among young children (more on Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills and Creative Play Makes for Kids in Control, including audio of the stories, available on-line). The premise is that structured playtime, and highly specialized toys, do less to develop [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}