Welcome back to the Simplicity Parenting podcast, the Simplicity Diaries, with me, Kem Jon Paine. Ah, you did it again. It's 10 minutes or so that you've carved out in your week.
This week, I wanted to talk about the beautiful, beautiful stage that kids get to when they start scripting their play. When they're, you know, five, six, seven years old, a little older, a little younger, give or take, they start scripting their play. And I want to explain that a little bit and explain the beauty of that, and then explain the danger that's posed to that by prepackaged stuff, particularly by screens, but also prepackaged toys, toys that just do too much for a child.
Now, look, let's start off with scripting and what that means. We've all heard it, right? It's just a name for when kids get together, and they, they'll move out of that, you know, well-known play stages, like solitary play, when they're very, very little, and then parallel play, where they play beside each other, and then socio-dramatic play, where, where their dress-ups and so on. Scripting play is just another little step forward, where, you know, you have four or five kids get together, or less, just one or two, and, and they say things like, well, you be like, you be like the fire guy, and like, I'll be like the fire chief, and like, you can be the puppy, and, and the little boy says, the younger sibling, I don't want to be the puppy.
Well, I'll be a bitey puppy. Okay, okay, you can bite, but you can't bite me. And then, and then when they get their roles sorted out, and then begins the script, right? So now they got their roles.
I'll, I'll like, you know, hear the siren, and then I'll come like in my truck really fast, and everyone has to get off the road. And this is a particularly choleric child, a fiery one, wanting everyone to get out of his way, and so on. But anyway, you know, and he's, it's fire, right? But it's scripted.
And another must say, well, look, when we get off the road, let's have like someone break down in their car. And then we'll like need a tow truck person that comes, and they, and it's just the loveliest thing. And they'll go on for, you know, the longest time and just play for usually a little bit shorter, maybe not.
But and then they'll, they'll, they'll hunker down and script out the next scene, and then come back, and they'll play it out. And then they'll script it out. Now, this is just so beautiful.
And it's, it's, it's kind of a core part of the myelination of the frontal lobes of the neocortex of the brain. Now the, what does that part of the brain do? I mean, it's hugely important, right? It's, it's planning, it's big picture, being able to hold the small component parts and fit them within the whole. Now the frontal lobes, neocortex, and so on, does more than that.
But it does do that as well. And when kids are doing this, they are myelinating this ability, this the brain's future capacities, to be able to get an overview of life, to be able to keep things in proportion, to be able to be upset, but realize that the upset is just about this. It's not about my whole life.
It's just about this one situation. It enables kids to when they grow up to have businesses and careers, where they can see a future path, they can plan something out, and then go for it, and then get to a point and be able to replan, because and adjust, and then go for it again. And that ability is success in relationships, in business, in careers, in school, it's so much is helped by that this, this and so much of this is laid the pathways for this is laid down in in scripting play.
That's, that's where this, this begins, this, this ability begins. Now, it's hugely interrupted by a couple of things. One of them is toys that do too much, where the toy is already so suggestive, or the game is so suggestive and kind of rigid, that that there's nothing much a child can do to actually script with it, because it's already fixed, it's already molded, it does everything for for a child, I have seen this over and over with these, with these, you know, sometimes quite expensive toys.
And really what the kids unpack when they unpack this expensive, plastic molded does everything for you sit back, push a button, and it does things. And they're often more interested in the cardboard box, or they'll quickly, you know, tire of the do everything toy and get back if it's alive enough for them in into into scripting, because it's already packaged, it's already done for them. And yet kids can get used to it.
And eventually, if that, if they've got toys like that, that that fed them over and over and over, I worry about their ability to come up with original scripting play. And I've seen that die back a little bit. The other thing that dramatically, hugely interrupts scripting play is screens, because screens, it's already scripted, right? That's what it's about.
It's scripted, and kids will sit there passively watching someone else's scripting. And basically watching an algorithm as it plays out on a screen if it's a game, but it's already done for them. Now, they may be able to level up and level, you know, and so on.
But it's not flexible enough. It doesn't give them the ability in that video game to be able to live within their own world. Now, people have said to me, well, you can create a world, but you're creating a world inside a world that is already has its boundaries.
And what's more, you got to buy the characters and buy the stuff. It's about money, of course, it's the game is invested in keeping kids inside, inside that world. Whereas scripting play has no boundaries.
scripting play also has a lot of negotiation, like I don't want to be the puppy, okay, I'll be the biting puppy world, you can't bite me, I'll be the end. And there's, there's just not that alive within a TV show, you're sitting passively watching a child is watching someone else's script. And they're not forming their own.
It's a little bit why Steve Jobs didn't have screens for his own kids. And when he was asked why, apparently he said, well, why would I want to have them passively watching someone else's creativity? I want my kids to be out of the box kids like me, you know, and I don't want them watching someone else's prepackaged stuff. That's, you know, that's my translation of what he said in that interview.
But if we can, if we can hold back on a lot of this prescriptive toys, a lot of this overly prescriptive television programming, YouTubing, and a lot of prescriptive video gaming, then we are literally building their future success. You know, it's not, it's not that I'm suggesting they don't have screens, because I want to take kids back into the into the 1920s. It's not at all.
It's the world they're going into is going to require more and more their ability to synthesize their ability. It's a fragmented old world that our kids are going into, unfortunately. But if we if they can synthesize it, if they can bring it together, if they can make sense of it, through the frontal lobe activity, hold the big picture, and there's that part, that part, that part.
And let's say they're in a gig economy, or they're working project based contract base, which more and more jobs are now, then we are when we hold back the disruptive forces of the myelination of the the neocortex, the prefrontal cortex, the frontal lobes, then, then that whole region, then we are doing them not a disservice in taking them back in time. We're preparing them for a world that is coming the real world that is on its way. So all this has tap roots in in free play, creative play.
But today, what we've done is that we've zoomed right in to to this beautiful scripting play stage. Okay, hope that was helpful. Bye bye for now.
