Case Western Reserve University psychologist Sandra Russ takes old-fashioned child's play seriously.

In her new book, "Play in Child Development and Psychotherapy" (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), she introduces the idea of actively teaching children how to play as a way to help them cope with stresses, practice self control and learn creative problem-solving.

Russ, who also is interim dean at the Case College of Arts and Sciences, has collected more than 70 years of research on play from the fields of child development and psychotherapy to give therapists, psychologists, educators-and parents-a new look at the importance of play in children's lives.

This is the first time research from the two fields has been brought together in one book.

"My main goal for writing the book was to gather together the research literature from child development and psychotherapy and say 'look at how play can help kids from the child development point of view, and let's try to inform the therapists with this knowledge,'" Russ said.

According to Russ, studying and using play in child development and psychotherapy has evolved from beliefs that, like adults who "work" out their problems, children play out theirs. Through play's make-believe structure, children learn to express emotions as well as practice creative problem-solving. Overly excited children also can use play to diffuse or calm down.

"There is plenty of potential for the use of play in children's lives," Russ said.

Her longitudinal studies with a group of children over more than a decade have shown that "good" players—those children who express a wide range of emotions and use creativity in play—continue to use their play skills in redefined and more mature ways to their benefit into their high school years.

Through her studies, Russ also has found that the ability to be a good player is independent of a child's intelligence. It is, instead, dependent on the child's family and environment-his or her parents' warmth and emotional sensitivity in addition to their verbal abilities.

"Therapists can use the information from child development specialists to understand what makes a child a good player," Russ said.

Although therapists have used play since the 1930s when Anna Freud first proposed this intervention for psychiatry, few studies of how play works in therapy have been done.

Russ also was one of the pioneers to develop the Affect Play Scale, a test that uses puppets and wood blocks to measure the range of emotions and creativity a child employs in his or her play. Her book provides the psychological community with a newly updated play scale as well as a review of play intervention studies.

Return to the online edition of the 10-16-03 Campus News.