Can a Toy Teach a Kid How to be a Successful Adult?

In 1999, business partners Jennifer Fine and Jennifer Hamlin collaborated to create a line of dolls designed to take the world by storm. These career-forward icons of the doll world would topple Barbie on her pretty little head by re-imagining how girls play.

Girl power!
Achievement!
You can be anything!

Unless you’re Ashley the Attorney or Emily the Entrepreneur. These “smart friends for smart girls” captured the public’s attention for one brief moment at the turn of the century.

Game over.

Like 90% of new businesses, the company folded in 2001, a real tragedy considering the dolls were even featured as one of Oprah’s Favorite Things of 1999.

Ouch.

Being an entrepreneur is hard.

I should know.

A few years ago, I also launched a doll company with the goal of reimagining how kids play. Built on a foundation of generosity and friendship, our dolls honored kids with cancer and helped kids who care learn how to be better friends.

What we discovered, however, is that kids don’t need adults to tell them how to play with their toys.

They’re really awesome at doing that all by themselves!

Every mammalian kiddo across the planet engages in some form of play. Play helps animals discover their abilities and learn their limits, two skills crucial for both survival and success.

At a seminar I attended way back in 2001, parenting coach and author John Rosemond said, “Kids only need like three or four toys: a ball, some blocks, a few crayons, and a stack of books.”

Just three or four toys?

I couldn’t believe it!

And yet…

Think about all the the things you can do with just the toys I mentioned:

Let’s take the ball, for example:

Bounce it.
Throw it.
Catch it.
Carry it.
Roll it.
Pass it.
Pop it.

A ball can be used to play a game of kickball, baseball, tetherball, or 4-square.

And what little girl hasn’t stuffed a ball under her shirt, and shouted, “Look! I’m pregnant!” Who hasn’t used a giant ball as a makeshift seat or a tiny one as ammunition aimed at a younger sibling’s head?

Sure, Taylor the Teacher, Destiny the Doctor, and Jessica the Journalist arrived with some really cool accessories: miniature chalk, stethoscopes, and press passes, just to name a few. But while those things were cool (and teeny weeny), did they really inspire kids to be attorneys, doctors, and journalists?

I would venture that using math to perfect the ratio of dirt and water for a proper mud pie would be better preparation for a career in education. Following a stray ball into the woods and ending up with an angry case of poison ivy might ignite a passion for medicine. And staying up late into the night pouring out our feelings into a journal could be just the confidence-booster our kids need to realize a career in journalism.

The REALITY

Playthings don’t really prepare kids for the roles they will one day lead. Over and over again, psychologists point to toys such as balls, blocks, and books as the devices that do the real heavy lifting. In fact, scientists confirm that fewer toys actually help kids focus longer and play more creatively.

The smart lesson we should have all learned by now: A child doesn’t need to be told how to play, no more than a kitten needs instructions for pouncing on a string or a puppy needs his mama to show him how to catch a frisbee.

All animals instinctively know how to play.

We spend our lives playing because we spend our lives learning. It’s all one big “Choose Your Own Adventure” where anything can happen. What prepares us for our roles—whether we’re a homemaker or a hack saw operator—is the time we spend figuring out how to innovate, create, solve problems, work out solutions, make amends, and adapt—using whatever the heck is right in front of us.

We don’t need fancy stuff. We just need…STUFF.

But if Emily the Entrepreneur taught me one important lesson it’s that there’s no such thing as a “big break.” Just because you land on Oprah’s List of Favorite Things doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy a lifetime of success.

When the blocks fall down, rebuild.
When the ball rolls away, go after it.
When the crayons break, color gently.
And when the book ends, write a new story.

It’s true—90% of first-time businesses do fail. But you know what else is true? 90% of entrepreneurs who pick up the pieces and start again—SUCCEED.

The first game I ever played I played without any toys at all, and I bet you played it too. Remember the magical world of MAKE BELIEVE? Yes! That fantastical place where anything can happen and anything can be? You can go there right now. If you can dream it, you can do it.

If you are one of the 12.3 million female entrepreneurs in the United States today, my advice to you is this: Never stop playing.

You’ll figure it out.

And if at first you don’t succeed, you can always try again. Chances are good—next time, you’ll find your way.

Want more good stuff?

Maybe We Need to Redefine Essential

Last Sunday my husband and I did a thing. We attended our very first in-person live community event in over eight months—a comedy show at our local theatre.

We saw Jessica “It’s All Good” Williams, perform her comedy special “We’re All Chocolate.”

“How many of you woke up on March 14th and realized you were non-essential?”

Oh yeah, I had to raise my hand for that one!

“Let’s give it up for all the non-essential workers out there!”

(Laughter and raucous applause. All 30 of us because—hello—physical distancing.) We did a good job trying to pretend we were actually hundreds of adoring fans.

But I started thinking….

What is essential?

“Many things are good, many are important, but only a few are essential.”

— D. Todd Christofferson

Surely Socrates or Confucious or Voltaire said something about essentialism.

THEY DID NOT.

But in 2014, Greg McKeown did write the definitive treatise on the subject. His book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, went on to sell more than one million copies and even became a New York Times bestseller.

According to McKeown’s own bio, he has dedicated his life to discovering why some people and teams break through to the next level and others don’t.

The answer, apparently, is essentialism, loosely defined as doing:

The Right Thing
The Right Way
At The Right Time

He called it the disciplined pursuit of less, but better.

And I like that because essentialism is more than just access to food, healthcare, and education, which no one can deny are important, but let’s be real—the people are the real heroes.

So maybe the real question isn’t “What is essential?” but “Who is essential?”

The best asset we have for making a contribution to the world is ourselves.

Ourselves!

I think some of us have forgotten that what we do isn’t nearly as important as who we are. And nothing teaches us more about who we are than coming face-to-face with adversity, something 2020 has shown us time and time again.

If you and I were to sit down across the table from each other and I were to ask you, “What is essential?” what would you say?

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Health
Family
Love
Laughter
Progress
Fun
Community
Friendship
Generosity

And you could probably add 100 more things to this list. Good things. Important things. True Things. But did you notice that all the things on this list would mean nothing without people?

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Essential is subjective.

And one of the best ways to discover what’s essential in ourselves is finding time to play. That’s what I did on Sunday. Going to the theatre was a form of play.

I knew I was going to have a good time.
I knew I was going to confronted with some hard truths.
I knew I would think.
And I knew I would laugh.

During periods of play, we explore our innate creativity. Play helps us see possibilities and make connections. Through play, we create new stories about our environment. Play is an important component in helping us develop one of the most important skills for success in business and in life—ADAPTABILITY.

Has there ever been a time in history when humans needed to access the adaptability part of their brains more than now?

Some people even claim that adaptability is the number one characteristic that separates successful people from the rest of us.

Not to mention that the show on Sunday made me so happy. I needed the laughs. I really needed them.

Play is an antidote to stress. The laughing made me feel like I was playing, and all the stress from the previous week simply melted away.

You know, I’m ready for the pandemic to end, too. I want to go back to the way things were, when I didn’t have to wear a mask and could enter a theatre with hundreds of other patrons and enjoy a show without thinking about physical distancing or airborne viruses.

But I also know what is happening right now, though painful, might be the very thing that is essential to helping me become the best version of myself.

Have you ever noticed that every great story begins with a tale of adversity?

Maybe this terrible thing that is happening to all of us is essential to helping us be the heroes of our own lives.

So the question of what is essential or who is essential doesn’t really matter. If pressed, my official definition would be anything or anyone that is absolutely necessary. Is a pandemic necessary? Guess what? Hardship and suffering are never wasted. Are you necessary? Absolutely! We are all learning to adapt. Don’t let this thing that’s happening in the world bring out the worst in you. Keep going. I believe we can all figure out new ways to live wholeheartedly in the midst of what most of us would describe as a dark spot in our shared history.

We have to. It’s essential.

Want more good stuff?

Jump in the Mud Puddle

People tend to describe me as more of a half-glass-full type of person, but even I can admit: these last few months have dragged. Long weeks of depressing news have been interrupted by short bursts of fun, but even I’m having a hard time staying positive when I don’t know how long this current reality will go on.

I’ve noticed among my friends this sort of collective sorrow. I wouldn’t describe it as depression, but it’s like the earth let out one big sigh.

And so I’ll admit it: I’m jealous of the children. For children, everything is novel and new, and the world fills them with joy. I would like to find that kind of joy. It shouldn’t be hard, actually. We all know someone who brings out the kid in us. Just watching a kid do something he/she loves can make us smile. And how many of us have had one of those experiences where we are reminded of ourselves as a kid?

Just recently, I saw that old Tootsie pop commercial on TV—the one with the owl who has to figure out how many licks it takes to get to the center of the Tootsie pop. Just thirty quick seconds brought back of flood of happy memories of me watching cartoons and eating sugary cereal in front of the TV on Saturday mornings while my parents slept.

My son plays soccer, and a few weeks ago I attended a game after a big rain. There were mud puddles everywhere, and there was this one kid wearing rain boots and just having the grandest time. I tiptoes around the mud puddles as I walked into the game, but that kid lifted his knees high and stomped right through them. He splashed and giggled like it was the most fun he had ever had in his life.

And it made me laugh, too, because I have to be honest: I would have loved to jump in that mud puddle.

But of course I was wearing my good jeans, and I didn’t want to ruin my shoes and the thought of driving home wet and muddy, not to mention how silly I would look—a grown woman playing in the mud puddle. Imagine!

You can guess what I did. I talked myself out of it.

That’s what adults do. We talk ourselves out of things—thinking of all the ways something won’t work or why it doesn’t make sense or how silly we’ll look doing it.

And then we wonder where all the joy went.

Brian Sutton-Smith, the pre-eminent voice in play theory, has a lot to say about the benefits of play. In fact, he’s quoted by a lot of other mental health pioneers, including the well-respected modern behavior scientist Brene Brown. Sutton-Smith was the first to say that the opposite of play isn’t work; it’s depression.

“The opposite of play isn’t work; it’s depression.”

— Brian Sutton-Smith

If you’re feeling down in the dumps, maybe the solution is easier than you think.

Maybe you just need to jump in a mud puddle.

And also, maybe we need to shift the way we see the mud puddles in front of us.

To a kid, a mud puddle is an opportunity—something to be embraced.
To an adult, a mud puddle is a hazard—something to be avoided.

Perspective is everything. And the good thing about mud puddles is that they are neither half full nor half empty.

If a glass of water is invitation to drink, a mud puddle is simply an invitation to play.

For more information on the benefits of play, you can watch these Ted Talks:

The Decline of Play: this one explores the link between the decline of play and the rise of depression and anxiety in adolescents and young adults.

Play Helps us Grow at Any Age: This one is just 12 minutes and will demonstrate how play can help you deal with the hard stuff of life.

Want more good stuff?

You Have Permission to Play

Today I was feeling a little depressed.

I got up at my usual time, made breakfast, and sat down to watch the news. And believe it or not, it wasn’t the news that made me depressed, just a culmination of things building up over the course of the last four weeks. Being stuck at home. Not seeing friends. Missing my parents and nieces and nephews.

It’s Spring Break, and like the rest of the world, we aren’t going anywhere. Easter is in two days, and we are smack dab in the middle of negotiating the sale of our house, which has been on the market for the last eight months.

Everything feels unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

To pass the time, I was flipping through this book I bought for my daughter at Christmastime. It’s called For the Love of Paper, and it’s filled with posters, stickers, envelope templates, and cards.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to make little Easter outfits out of the pretty paper for a set of paper dolls?” I thought.

But then I remembered that my youngest daughter is twelve, and getting her to do anything with me these days is a challenge. She doesn’t like playing with dolls anymore, and so I talked myself out of even asking her.

In fact, I decided not to make the paper dolls at all.

And deciding NOT to do this made me even more sad.

Because for years I’ve been telling other parents about the importance of free play. I preach about creativity all the time. And here I was, with plenty of time on my hands, a drawer full of art supplies, and most importantly an idea about something to do, and instead of going for it, I said, “Nah. That’s dumb.”

Free play helps kids learn how to think and grow and solve problems. They’re practicing being grownups years before they’re actually grown up. We provide them with blocks, so they can build houses and plastic kitchen sets, so they can prepare pretend meals for their pretend families. They set up pretend offices in their playrooms and build secret forts outside. They hold “board meetings” long before they ever get a chance to lead a real one. They “fly airplanes” and “drive cars,” all practice for the day they get to fill up the tank and take off on their own.

This important time is the foundation for everything they’ll one day become.

And suddenly it dawned on me: I’m becoming something, too.

These days at home are not wasted days.

What if I reframed my circumstances to reconnect with childhood?
What if I could recapture some of that childlike curiosity to practice things I’ve never done so that on the day we’re free from this self-imposed quarantine I won’t be overwhelmed by all there is to do?What if I used this time to make a plan?
And what if I did it by thinking of it as play?

Time at home is practice, not punishment.

Children live in a strictly controlled environment. Where than can go and what they can do and with whom is monitored.

We use words like “good parenting” and “boundaries,” but let’s be honest—that’s a fancy way of framing “quarantine.”

And yet, kids don’t stop playing.

In fact, most of my friends tell me it’s not their kids who are having trouble with quarantine—it’s them.

The parents are the ones who are struggling.
We’ve tasted freedom.
We know what we’re missing.

And I could sit here and feel sorry for myself and be bitter because I don’t “have anyone to play with” or I could reconnect with little Chantel and just make the clothes for the paper dolls.

Because it’s fun.
And it’s creative.
And golly, I want to.

The biggest obstacle to play is boredom.

According to Harvard educators, you just have to wait out that initial discomfort, which is unfamiliar and might feel scary. (source)

“To be bored” is not a synonym for “to waste time.”

And I think I had tricked myself into believing that all these weeks spent at home were a waste of time, despite the truth that our family is spending more time together, eating higher quality meals, getting more sleep, being more thoughtful of others, acting more generously, laughing more, spending more time in meditation, practicing more mindfulness and gratitude, keeping a cleaner house, maintaining an organization strategy, exercising outdoors, and checking on friends who live far away.

It’s been such a long time since I’ve had to be self-directed and curious. In this over-scheduled world, every minute of my day is planned and accounted for.

And truth be told—it’s mostly reactive. Until now, I have been doing what other people wanted me to do. Saying yes to meetings. Adding appointments to my calendar. Driving carpool.

And now…

Now, I get to decide what I want to do because there is literally nothing to do.

For the first time in a long time, adults and kids get to enjoy free play together.

Free play allows people to develop cognitive and emotional strengths. Free play enhances problem solving skills.

But most importantly, play decreases depression, anxiety, perfectionism, and stress.

All this extra time is practice for the grownup I want to be. I don’t want to be depressed or anxious. I want to say goodbye to stress, and most importantly I want to be ready for any problem that might come my way.

On the surface, making clothes for paper dolls doesn’t seem like it would be practice for any kind of real-life problem, especially since I don’t even know how to use a sewing machine. But that’s exactly the kind of negative self-talk that keeps us from connecting with our childhood.

And there’s no reason why you can’t say yes to an activity just because it sounds like it might be fun.

I’m gonna go get my book and get to work.

Ummm, no not work…play.

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