A Summary Of The Decline Of Play In Sensory Issues

In the Washington Post dated September 1, 2015 an article entitled The Decline of Play in Preschoolers-and the Rise in Sensory Issues written by Angela Hanscom, was published. The article depicted a story about the Hanscom’s oldest daughter and her success in pre-school. Hanscom enrolled her daughter in a preschool whose focus on the child’s academic enrichment was similar to her own. In addition to enrolling her daughter in the school, Hanscom increased the number of organized play dates with children her own age, enrolled her daughter into music and dance lessons, and took her on trips to local museums. Hanscom even partnered with other parents and neighbors for “enrichment classes to practice sorting, coloring, counting, numbers, letters, and to practice sitting (Hanscom, 2015)”. While the efforts of preparing her daughter to thrive academically succeeded, Hanscom’s found out later that her child would be decline in other areas.

The pre-school teacher notified Hanscom that her daughter was exceeding expectations in the areas of academics, but was currently having trouble with basic social skills, such as sharing and taking turns.

The teacher found that the child was also having trouble with controlling her emotions while displaying anxiety and sensory issues. As schools are limiting the amount of free play time in order to “meet the growing demands for academic readiness that is expected before children enters kindergarten (Hanscom, 2015)” , children become easily frustrated, less attentive, and demonstrate an inability to control their emotions. It is said that children learn best through meaningful play experiences, that is critical the developmental

stage.
As this article relates to Eric Erikson’s Pyschosocial Theory, there is a conflict in the stage preschool: exploration versus guilt. According to Erikson, the pre-school age is where the child demonstrates exploration and play in their environment. During this stage of development children need to be begin asserting control and power in their environment. If a child exudes too much power in their environment then he or she will experience some kind of disapproval. The disapproval that they experience will then result in the child feeling a sense of guilt. As stated in Erikison’s psychosocial theory “the eight psychosocial stages of development are patterned sequences of stages encompassing appropriate physical, emotional, cognitive tasks that the individuals must master in the struggle to adjust to the demands of the social environment (Ashford and Croy,2010)”. That is that each individual must master the first stage and all its task in order to procced to the next stage. Failure to master the stage and its tasks determines how they will succeed in the next stage.
The article conveys the concern of children becoming less involved with free play, in more involved in organized learning experiences, which causes children to experience difficulty behaving in their social environment. In the preschool stage, where the child is required to take initiative over their environment, a child who lacks social skills and proper managed over their emotions will have difficulty in the next stage of development, school age. According to the article, when the children reach elementary school or school age, teachers are required to “practice special breathing techniques, coping skills, run social groups, and utilize special exercises in an attempt to teach children to improve focus (Hanscom, 2015)”.