Remember when you were a kid and were always playing? You often made mistakes, but those mistakes never got in the way of you trying again, trying something new, and ultimately coming to a place of success. Dogs and other species are no different when it comes to the learning process that games and play offer. Failure is only a platform to try harder, mistakes are only a tool for learning the corr
ect movements and processes, frustration and stress are minimal and enhance rather than detract from reaching the goals of the game. Why Play?
“Play is training for the unexpected.” Marc Bekoff, Contemporary American biologist
Play does so many positive things for us in terms of learning. When we play:
• We build skills like confidence
• We strengthen relations with others
• We develop creative skills
• We problem solve and tinker
• We learn to be flexible
People who play learn to question something, predict an outcome, and evaluate their predictions through the process of play. When we play, we persist through challenges -- and we even enjoy it. Play builds excellent social and emotional skills and helps create an atmosphere where those skills are valued. Probably one of the most important aspects of play is the way it treats failure and mistakes as non-punitive, ensuring that we have opportunities to learn from whatever went wrong. Yes, play makes failure fun. I love the use of the word "tinker" to describe play. It's serious work, but it's also fun work. Play values the process of learning as well as well as what has been learned.
