The Inner World of Play: How Your Child Builds a Self and a Brain
By Dr. Eva Virag Suhajda
As a scientist, I’m fascinated by a simple question: What counts as play? When two cockroaches push each other with their antennae for no reason, are they playing? We can’t know for sure. But we do know this: for our children, play is not just a frivolous pastime. It’s the essential work of building a self, constructing a brain, and learning how to be the authors of their own lives. In this article, we’ll explore the profound, often invisible, processes that unfold every time your child plays.
The First Stirrings: How Play Builds a “Self”
Think of a tiny, two-week-old baby looking at her own hand. She stretches her fingers, then closes them. To us, it’s a cute, random movement. To her, it is a moment of profound discovery. She is building her own identity. How?
She sees her hand move, and at the very same time, she feels it moving from the inside. This internal feeling comes from her proprioceptive senses—special senses that report on our body’s position, movement, and effort. When she initiates the movement herself, the connection between seeing and feeling is powerful. It’s a completely different experience from when a parent puts her hand on a pillow; in that case, the internal sense of action is missing.
Through these simple, self-initiated acts, the baby is forming the very basis of her self—a self within a body, or an “embodied” self. This process is crucial for developing what we call agency.
Agency is the feeling that you are the author of your own actions. It’s the “I did that!” feeling. When a baby first gets his thumb in his mouth by accident, it’s a reflex. When he does it again on purpose to get that same soothing feeling, that is the birth of agency. In their first year, children build this fundamental sense that they can make things happen. While a child is dependent on caregivers for almost everything, play is the one area where they can experience this feeling of being in control, a feeling that is absolutely essential for growing into an autonomous, problem-solving adult.
A Look Inside the Playful Brain
Why is this feeling of play so powerful? Because play is not just something we do; it’s a biological need. Modern neuroscience shows us that the drive to play is a deeply rooted, default mechanism of the brain.
It comes from what we call the subcortical regions of the brain. Imagine the brain has a modern, “thinking” outer layer (the cortex) and a more ancient, emotional “engine room” underneath. That engine room is the subcortical area, and it’s responsible for basic, primary emotions and drives that ensure our survival—like FEAR, RAGE, and, as neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp argues, PLAY. This drive is so fundamental that it doesn’t even require conscious thought at its most basic level.
How do we know? In fascinating experiments, scientists found that even if a rat’s cortex (the thinking part) is removed, the rat remains playful and motivated to play-fight. The drive to play comes from a much deeper place. The thinking cortex is involved later, helping to regulate play based on social situations, but it doesn’t generate the initial urge. This tells us that providing opportunities for play isn’t an optional extra; it’s like providing food or comfort—it satisfies a core biological drive.
Play: The Safe Rehearsal for Life
If play is such a basic drive, what is its purpose? Play is the ultimate learning space. The psychologist D.W. Winnicott described it as a “transitional space”—not entirely in the child’s imagination, but not quite in “real life” either. It’s a safe zone for rehearsing the skills needed for a complex world.
When we face a problem in real life, our brain runs through several steps. First, it builds mental models or alternative scenarios to predict what might happen. Then, it decides on the best scenario and, finally, it takes action, or implements the plan. Play is the perfect training ground for this entire process.
In play, children are constantly building mental models and testing them out. They learn crucial “if-then” rules that help them navigate the world. For example, a baby learns, “If I contract my arm this way, then I get the reward of sucking my thumb”. This process is called credit assignment; the brain assigns credit to the rules that work and discards the ones that don’t.
Every time a child has an experience, including a play experience, they strengthen the neural connections in their brain. As the neuroscientist Donald Hebb famously said, “neurons that fire together, wire together”. When we play, our body and brain don’t distinguish between a “play” action and a “real” one; the same raw feelings and neural processes are generated. Therefore, the strong mental models and neural networks built during play can be directly used for problem-solving, long-term planning, and success in later life.
The Modern Challenge: The Dangers of a “Play Deficit”
We have seen how essential self-initiated play is for building a sense of self and a well-functioning brain. But our modern world often discourages it. Out of love and a desire to protect, we strive to create safe environments and provide enriching, organized activities. This has led to two trends: a deep-seated fear of risky play and a focus on “intensive parenting,” where children’s schedules are highly institutionalized.
This creates what author Peter Gray calls a “play deficit”. When a child’s life is filled only with adult-led activities—even wonderful ones like a drama or sports class—they learn something profound on a subconscious level: that the initiation of activities always comes from the outside. They learn that others are the ones to decide what is good for them.
This is not a bad thing in itself, but it becomes a problem if it’s the
only model children have. Just as a baby must be the one to initiate moving her own body to build a self, an older child must initiate their own play to build a complex sense of agency. If a child is always directed, their internal motivation and self-initiation can diminish, creating a vicious circle where they feel less able to have an impact on their world. This is how children can effectively “de-learn” how to play.
This loss of agency is not trivial. Research already points to correlations between play deficit and problems like obesity and even ADHD. On a societal level, a lack of mature agency can lead to adults with less creativity, initiative, and problem-solving skills—the very skills we desperately need in our ever-changing world.
Letting our children play, therefore, is not just a gift to them. It is an investment in their future as capable, creative, and purposeful human beings. It is an investment in all of humanity.
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