On the flip-side, non-athletic forms of play are no less at risk. If not hypothetically more so. For example, art. Children often produce drawings and paintings with a prolificness Picasso could appreciate. The directing impulses being no different from how youngsters play soccer, process driven. Patience and planning in art is a symptom of goal-drivenness, a product of curators and auctions. Children draw houses, but they could care less about perspective. Again like soccer this is not an issue of underdevelopment or ignorance of efficiency. Kids simply enjoy the process of involvement. Thus the reason a five year old will create 40 paintings of his family with no discernible difference among any of the pieces.

  A physical representation of pile and stack approaches is apparent with the concept of display. Children are happy to have their work scattered about in piles. It is only when adults insist that they be magneted upon the refrigerator, and cover the child's bedroom walls that the augmentation of art beings. Literally turning piles into stacks (horizontally displayed in this case). Parents are not positively reinforcing expressive acts as much as

previous page

home

next page