Here is an earth-shattering piece of information ? play is important to children. Really? You're KIDDING!

Perhaps it might be more helpful to consider how it is important to children, what play does, what role it has in the lives of children.

According to studies cited by Karen Stagnitti in an Australian journal for occupational therapists in 2004, play is regarded as a sweeping activity that helps develop skills in cognition, socialisation, communication, self-awareness, problem-solving and sensory-motor functions.

She asserted that play facilitates flexibility in thinking, adaptability, learning, problem solving, exploration to gain a sense of mastery over one's environment, integration of information from the environment, and development of social, intellectual, emotional and physical skills.

That's a lot of stuff riding on the back of what often looks like a waste of time to adults.

Some kinds of play, however, might be called "bad play". According to Scarlett, Naudeau, Solinius-Pasternak, and Ponte, in their book, , (2005) bad play is risky, mean-spirited, or misbehaving.

Risky play consists of things like lying down on railroad tracks, playing chicken on bikes, throwing things at cars, or jumping off bridges and rocks into unknown waters. Mean-spirited play results in making someone else unhappy or terrified. Teasing and bullying falls into this category, both of which are very destructive, especially when they occur in socially loaded settings like school. Included here are those inappropriate sexually loaded activities usually conducted by pre-adolescent boys ? things like bra snapping or telling sexually loaded jokes.

Misbehaving play is that which is chronic and compulsive. It suggests psychological disorder. This kind of play consists of things like habitually showing off and stealing attention during class time, shoplifting, setting fires, or mistreating animals.

Some people think of play as the "language" of childhood. To adults it is often a foreign language, spoken in an alien place. Children embed themselves in this foreign land. Who knows the place's real name, but we can call it the "Imagine-Nation."

In the Imagine-Nation everyone speaks play. Mostly children live there, but ambassadors from the lands of adults do conduct diplomacy and visit from time to time. They have to suspend adult ways of thinking, however, in order to understand or be understood in the Imagine-Nation. Adults have to learn the language of play, and for them it's a strange experience in which they often find themselves asking such questions as, "How did I lose this?"

Therapists who utilise play with children have learned to let the children guide the play rather than to attempt guiding it themselves.

This is called non-directional play therapy. Some have said there is a very important difference between what happens when an adult tries to play, but approaches it still as an adult, and when a child actually plays. The adult picks up an object and asks, "What will this thing do?"

The child picks up the object and asks, "What can I do with this thing?" Do you see the difference? There is a kind of losing oneself in the second, something an adult usually does not do as a first inclination. All things are possible in play, whereas in an adult orientation not all things are possible, and the efficiency required for a conservation of energy and resources that an adult uses to accomplish goals includes objective evaluation. Objective evaluation is not the language of the Imagine-Nation.

Now, ironically, creativity consultants who are often called upon by organisations and businesses, have to use the language of play in order to achieve their results ? to get adults to "think" (don't you love it) outside of the box." Ironically, it's not so much about thinking as it is about playing, playfulness, and living a bit in the Imagine-Nation.

Play is important for children, but it enriches the lives of adults.