creative play for 7+

[lyrebird]

I have a desperate request for ideas, suggestions as to how to set up the home to support the imagination and stimulate the interest of a 7 year old. The problem is as follows.

My son gets home from school and says he’s bored. He seems to have lost the ability to play creatively, he seems to need Lego in order to be able to play (we currently bring the Lego out on weekends). We have blocks, trains, vehicles, animals, people, a treehouse he hasn’t really played with much. We have recently moved and are in a smaller space (for another few months). We also don’t have a backyard to just spill out into in the afternoons and go exploring – there is a communal backyard in which I’m encouraging some ball games, mucking about on the grass, etc, but we can’t make anything there or dig or… anything, really. He’s really missing his old backyard! So many adventures there.

I had thought of wooden knights/castle type set up ... I don't want to spend too much money on something he's not going to play with though... 

I’m at a loss as to what to make available to him at the moment – I think I’ve heard of this transitional phase but I want to understand it more and how to deal with it. I will talk to his teacher but please anyone with ideas or comments….? Do they pick up creative play again and if so how, or what does it morph into? What sorts of things are they likely to need? I know this is an age for them to go into their interests more but I’m not sure he knows what he’s interested in yet. We do a bit of craft and music, but that’s directed. This has been a very stressful time for us all, so that’s affecting him as well, he needs an outlet through creative play, I think he would manage the transition better (move out of area, new school, new house), if he had that. At the moment his outlet is to stick his nose in a book and read read read (I caught him after lights out tonight delighting in his newly found skill and destroying his eyesight :).

I haven’t found a book that talks about this stage – there’s plenty out there for the early years, but what happens next? Any recommendations for a read? Any posts in the archives you can point me to?

Thanks so much!

[appalachiamama]

Maybe the quiet time at home is his way of decompressing after a day at school?  Reading in dim light doesn't hurt your eyes, but it may make them tired.  AWSNA has books for each age range and here are the ones for 7-11: http://www.awsnabooks.org/store/index.php?cPath=57_58_61

The Parenting Passageway has great resources for each age.  They may not be play-centered, but they do provide insight into the age in question and I always get something good out of visiting her site.  Here's seven: http://theparentingpassageway.com/category/development/age-seven/  There seem to be a lot of good ideas in the articles entitled "Your Super Seven Year Old."

I hope you get some good ideas and reassurance.

[lyrebird]

thanks for these suggestions. I have looked back through the archives also and there are actually quite a few ideas to be had there! 

It is hard to work out where to go from here but I have a few ideas, a couple of which I think are really crucial and which I have overlooked up till now, such as giving him his own space (he shares a room) - even if it's just a corner, so he can start developing his own projects (art, craft, building, collections, etc.). He needs his own space that he can go to for inspiration. Finding the right place and space for things is always a challenge. 

The other thing I realise he needs more of and we've neglected of late is a stronger rhythm and balance between work and play - so more responsibility I think for young master coming up. That way he's more satisfied too during "play" time. 

We also need to get outside a lot more and get active, that will help too I'm sure. Growing boys need loads of exercise. 

I bought him a sword recently - he seems to be enjoying imaginary conquests - especially dragons - so all is not lost :)

[JudiAU]

Is there a reason you limiting his access to legos? They can be a totally imaginative and open-ended outlet for a lot of kids in exactly the same way that some of the other toys you mentioned. I understand not wanting it to be a character/movie orientated directed experience but it doesn't need to be. DS at 5.75 really needs something to decompress with after school and that often fits the bill in the same way playmobil, little people, dinosaurs, duplos, and knights did earlier. After awhile he'll pick up a pencil and draw (he adores drawing) or dressup clothes etc. 

[Jacquelin]

I agree with not limiting the legos if he enjoys them. It seems to me that there are some transition issues as well as some normal developmental issues that would be happening to any boy his age (move or not). I noticed that free play changed after 1st-2nd grade too. Have you tried any mechanical gadgets or books about how things work or books with ideas about do-at-home "science" experiments? What about yo-yos and other toys that take practice to master? Also, is he getting enough playdates? Maybe he is worried about friendships?

[tittipeitto]

I agree with the advice about lego's. My son is also 7 and his creative play has shifted into creative creating ;) I just realized that, he builds and little brother plays. Therefore I think legos are a brilliant toy for a kid his age. And serves as a good downtime. My son has learned a lot from building from the directions but sooner or later, after little brother breaks them, each lego set becomes more material for creations from his own mind. The characters also turn to their own make up guys and they don't seem to follow the "rules' out of the movies, they haven't seen anyways. I recently bought a 16+ house set, kind of for myself, and that has taken his lego building to another level. (we never followed the directions, just made houses on our own)

So, enough lego advertising :)

We have a wooden tree house thing too, and just the other day my son wanted to do some craft together and I thought it would be a great thing to needle felt some decorations to the gnome house, to get him more excited about his #1 christmas wish. And it worked, at least for the night, gnome house was again a hit.

I know there's this trend of simplicity parenting, and giving only a few toys at a time. I'm not at all convinced this is the way to go for 7 and up. As much as we try to simplify, our house still is full of things that become useful. dress ups (not ready made costumes, but just fabrics, old belts, old purses), stones, yarn, rope, glass jars, blankets, chairs. You can imagine all this means a big mess, so his own space is a great idea ;)

[Jacquelin]

I think the simplicity thing is relative! I find that all of the little treasures (i.e., random crap found at the playground, pieces of wood and seashells) are sometimes more irritating than toy clutter. I have come to the conclusion that kids are hoarders anyway so we parents ought not be enabling them by buying them lots of stuff too!! 

I also agree with everything said here about Legos. I think some people think that kids in Waldorf schools don't play with Legos because they are plastic. Sure, they are not going to have them available in school but at home, my observation is that these kids build from directions and use them in an open-ended way. I think at a certain age it is hard to get boys to continue with fantasy play. Fantasy play has continued with legos, but only with other kids from school. The other kids prefer to get their fantasy play through video games. I suppose I am old-fashioned but when I was a kid even the boys who were video game junkies only got to play them once in a while by saving up their quarters to go to an arcade. The rest of the time they had to play outside or with their "action figures" (i.e., dolls).  Parents want to give their kids the best of everything these days but I think there is something to be said about having to imagine your own stories. I played Barbies for hours. I've got all these fancy feminist ideas about Barbies today but when I was a young girl the things I imagined seemed so real and their bodies seemed more than hunks of moulded plastic.

Does anyone else feel like the the trend today is to either lock your kids up or have them constantly in a planned activity or on their way to it? I always wanted to have the house where all the kids wanted to hang. Unlike my mom, I want to feed the whole neighborhood popsicles on a hot summer day. But the kids think our house is boring. They race to the playroom expecting to find a media room and even though we have legos, remote control cars and other games, they think it is boring because there is no wii or television. Anyone else have this problem?  

[honeybee80]

My 7 year old DS also really likes legos and had been getting bored with them once he put them together according to the directions.  I've since dumped them all into a big container and encouraged him to just build his own creations without directions and he's been much happier with them.  I just explained to him that when I was little, kids played with legos totally differently than they do now--very open ended.  He thought that was cool and has been pretty great adopting that philosophy himself ;)  

[tittipeitto]

Originally Posted by Jacquelin 

Does anyone else feel like the the trend today is to either lock your kids up or have them constantly in a planned activity or on their way to it? I always wanted to have the house where all the kids wanted to hang. Unlike my mom, I want to feed the whole neighborhood popsicles on a hot summer day. But the kids think our house is boring. They race to the playroom expecting to find a media room and even though we have legos, remote control cars and other games, they think it is boring because there is no wii or television. Anyone else have this problem?  

Jacquelin,

Totally feel the same way with you about the first one, our neighbor from one side wanted me to sign up my son with hers in karate 5 nights a week!! She "just wanted to keep him off the computer games" I was like, no I can't do that kind of service to my kid, I just say no, and he better just play. The neighbors on the other side are much more the "can our kids jump over the fence to your side, again" -type and I feel so blessed with that.

But on the other question, we have the opposite experience, which surprises me. Our friends kids who spend their home life completely media occupied, become real old fashioned kids in my house. I don't know if it's my sons personality, he is creative with play and super social, so he doesn't give them a chance to want a video game. Or, as I like to think, maybe something has gone right in the way I do the kids room, even though I have hard time balancing with my desire for simplicity and giving my kids a fantasy land where they are free to create. So we don't have piles of cars in all different sizes or electronic toys that talk to you, but we do have a lot. A puppet theatre, shelf with glass bottles and play dishes and play food, swords, bow and arrow, ton of costumes, a science kit that is always out with their watercolor experiments. And these tv-kids just go off at my house playing and playing.

I really hope this will not change with age anytime soon... I was remembering with my cousin how we played till we we're 12 and 14, and not just barbies, but "house"! And now her kids 8 and 10 are riding a bike listening to music or lining up their collector cars. it's like they are growing up too fast!! 

[Jacquelin]

Originally Posted by tittipeitto 

our neighbor from one side wanted me to sign up my son with hers in karate 5 nights a week!!

Oh, dear! Why would anyone do that to themselves (let alone their child) unless they were really into martial arts?! How do you make dinner and relax at the end of the day if there is always some place to be? 

I am glad you have had such a good experience with getting playmates to play! I remember playing house and other things like that until - all of a sudden it seemed - I couldn't. I remember feeling a loss because I didn't know how to do what I saw older girls doing. I remember asking my mom about what older girls did if they didn't play and I vividly remember learning to change my question from "Can Sally play?" to "Can Sally come over?" 

Are there any mothers of tweens out there? I'd be interested to know how this transition went for them. Did it happen later than their peers with more mainstream influences? What differences did you notice?   

[tittipeitto]

I remember the moment/moments too, when I would set up the coolest house for my barbies ever (we had no actual barbie furniture, it was all made out of crab around the house) and then realizing I couldn't continue past that point. I was old enough to realize, that oh, this is it, I'm too old to play now. I hadmixed feelings of it, and was not ready to let go of the creative, so I started to make barbie comics by photographing them :D

This happened to my cousin much later, she was older than me and played with me till she was 15!! but it had to be a secret when her friends came over :D

I have to just specify one more thing:

Originally Posted by Jacquelin 

 I have come to the conclusion that kids are hoarders anyway so we parents ought not be enabling them by buying them lots of stuff too!! 

I by no means mean that we should buy a ton of toys for our bigger kids by saying that simplicity parenting is not for them. Have you read the book? it advices to put everything else away and give them one or two toys at a time, including one or two books to choose from (not an official quote, told to me by friends) And this sounds applicable and maybe useful for toddlers especially if you feel like you need to be in control of what they choose to play. Supposingly this makes the child so much happier. So what I mean is that there's just no way I could do that to my seven year old. "Here honey, at the living room rug are your choises for the day." No, they are his toys and it's his room and for his pirate boat built out of his bunk bed, he considers EVERYTHING in the house his material: toilet paper rolls as cannons, the whole kitchen set carried to the bunk bed as pirate kitchen... etc, my yarn, my spatulas... everything can be usefull. So while this is simplicity in a way that we are not buying him everything he wants, but the mess that comes out of it is not simple, and there's definitely not only two toys involved. Regardless, my kids seem balanced and happy, content with what they have, and no problems with ability to play creatively.