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Hey y’all! Welcome back to our Advocacy Alphabet. My name is Natasha Kile, and I’m your AECA Public Policy Chair. And this time, we’re talking about C is for Child-Directed Play.
If you’ve spent any kind of time in an early childhood classroom, you already know what research has spent decades confirming: when children play, they learn. Not just social skills or creativity—though those matter enormously—but language, math, self-regulation, problem-solving, and executive function. The science is not ambiguous: child-directed play is not a break from learning; it is the learning. So why are we still fighting for it? Across the country, and right here in Arkansas, early childhood classrooms are feeling the squeeze. More standards, more assessment, more pressure to produce academic outcomes earlier and earlier. The result is that play is being pushed out of the very spaces where it belongs most. And when play disappears from early childhood settings, it is always the most vulnerable children who lose the most.
This is an advocacy issue. When policymakers design early learning standards without input from early childhood professionals, play gets deprioritized. When funding structures reward narrow academic metrics, teachers feel pressure to abandon what they know is best practice. When kindergarten becomes the “new first grade,” the ripple effect moves backward, right into our toddler and preschool classrooms.
As early childhood professionals, we have both the knowledge and the responsibility to push back. That means educating the decision-makers in our communities about what developmentally appropriate practice actually looks like. It means showing up when curriculum decisions are being made. It means saying, clearly and confidently, that a child building a block tower is developing spatial relations, and that a child engaged in dramatic play is building the foundation for literacy.
Play is not a luxury. It’s not a filler. It’s not what happens when the “real work” is done. Play is the work, and protecting it is ours. Join me next time for ‘D is for Developmentally Appropriate Practice’.
Do you have an advocacy story you’d like to share? I would love to feature your voice in a future column. Reach out to me at policy@arkansasearlychildhood.org.
p.s. You can find all the posts in the Advocacy Alphabet series here
Natasha Kile
AECA Public Policy Chair
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