From Barbie dolls to action figures, the range of toys available to kids is expansive. But when a kid picks up a play gun from the toy aisle, parents may pause to question whether or not plastic ...

In 2014, police killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice as he played with a toy gun at a Cleveland recreation center. Ma’Khia Bryant was 16 when she was killed by police, also in Ohio. In Orlando, six-year-old ...

If you Google such phrases as “playing with children,” you will find lots of experts telling you how important parent-child play is for both parties. They describe it as a way for you to bond with and ...

Think of it as the sound of budding resilience and capability. Having children comes with a lot of surprises, but the one thing for which I was wholly unprepared was the noise level in the house.

One of my earliest posts here concerned the definition of play, which I developed further in an article on “Definitions of Play” for Scholarpedia (Gray, 2013) and in my book Free to Learn. I first ...

Children learn more through ‘guided play’ than from teacher-led instruction, according to a new study by experts at Cambridge University. A play-focused approach to learning, where children are ...

Playing with dolls could help children learn to be empathetic and social, skills that are particularly important to hone now while many children are still learning remotely and have limited access to ...

Playtime isn’t just all fun and games. Kids learn important developmental and social skills through playing with others and by themselves. Associative play is one of the six stages of play — a ...

I’ll begin with a confession. Or maybe it’s a warning. I like playing with my kids. I don’t play with them every day, nor, consistently, every week. But when I do play with them things happen in my ...

A growing body of research shows how pressure from overbearing coaches and parents is stunting children’s emotional ...

Tackle football offers children as young as 5 the chance to make friends, learn teamwork, maybe attract a college scholarship. Growing research shows it also can cause injuries that damage developing ...