"Play, with all its exuberance and delighted togetherness, can ease the stress of parenting. Playful Parenting is a way to enter a child’s world, on the child’s terms, in order to foster closeness, confidence, and connection. Play is also the way that children make the world their own, exploring, making sense of all their new experiences."
Playful Parenting, Lawrence J. Cohen, Ph.D.
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"Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth. Play also offers an ideal opportunity for parents to engage fully with their children."
The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds, Pediatrics, January 2, 2007, Dr. Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MSEd and the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health.
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" I think of play as a toddler’s number-one essential vitamin. He needs large doses of it every day. Play:
• Thrills the senses
• Helps toddlers master movement
• Stretches the mind
• Stimulates language use
• Boosts friend-making skills
• Stimulates the immune system
• Builds self-confidence
• Improves nighttime sleeping
"
The Happiest Toddler on the Block, Dr. Harvey Karp, M.D.
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"Play is the foundation of creativity, school success, curiosity, learning, the way children make meaning of their lives. Creative play is like journal writing, the beginning of self-reflection."
The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World, Dr. Susan Linn, PhD
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"Play builds motor skills, improves your child’s mind, and prepares him for the world."
Secrets of the Baby Whisperer for Toddlers, Tracy Hogg
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"We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing."
George Bernard Shaw, 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature
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