Psihologia jocului

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1. 01

   Role play is not the rest between serious activities but the activity through which self-control is built: a child who cannot stand still for a minute stands still for five if they are a sentry.

   Psihologia jocului · 1978

   In play the rule is not imposed from outside but demanded from within by the role the child wants.

   Elkonin continued Vygotsky's line and formulated the idea of the leading activity: at every age there is a type of activity that pulls development along with it, and in the preschool years that is role play. The reason is subtle. In role play the child voluntarily takes on a rule: if I am a doctor I cannot do what I like, I have to do what a doctor does. The rule is not imposed from outside but demanded from within by the role they want. That is how the capacity to subordinate impulse to a rule — the core of self-regulation — gets practised in the most enjoyable form possible. The constantly cited experiment is the sentry: children who could not stay still for even a minute on request stayed still far longer when standing guard inside a game. Elkonin's second observation concerns the impoverishment of play: as toys become realistic and fully defined, the space for symbolisation shrinks — a stick can be anything, a toy that does one thing can only be itself.

   “In play a child is always above his average age, above his usual behaviour; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself.”

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