Melissa Bernstein: Inspiring kids and parents through play

The brilliant mind behind 35 years of Melissa & Doug toys breaks down the connection between creative play and civic curiosity.

Anyone who can make me cry on Prozac has a special place in my heart. Melissa Bernstein gifted me with a good cry twice. 

After building a billion-dollar toy company and raising six (6!) kids, Melissa emerged as one of the most powerful voices for mental health awareness. Her honesty and vulnerability in sharing her experience of “existential depression”, which she chronicled in a beautiful memoir called LifeLines: An Inspirational Journey From Profound Darkness to Radiant Light, knocked me over. Melissa and Doug’s newest venture, Lifelines, applies their toy-making genius to helping adults cope with anxiety.

I became a walking PSA for postpartum mental health after I was diagnosed with Perinatal OCD (I hadn’t heard of it either) when my son was 3 months old.

My mental health began to deteriorate around month 5 of my pregnancy. I spent the next 7 months trapped in a nightmare I was too scared to even try to understand.

Everything changed when a clumsy Google search led me to a book called Dropping the Baby and Other Scary Thoughts. I cried my way through in one sitting. Most importantly, I finally felt confident enough to tell my therapist what I was experiencing, and together we found a psychiatrist specializing in perinatal mental health. A few months later, my parenting journey finally started to take shape.

The idea of preparing humans for life is overwhelming. There are many things we hope our kids will become that necessarily take precedent over being “civically engaged”. But what if we could start empowering our kids just by letting them play? We can. It won’t always be that simple, but sometimes it is.  

The ethos behind Melissa & Doug toys inspired my own parenting ethos. It’s rooted in powerfully simple ideas like let your kids be bored and inspire creativity through play.

Melissa Bernstein on how creative play empowers both kids and parents by honing foundational skills for civic engagement.

The gift of play is the hallmark of childhood… not only because it’s fun and joyful, but because it is essential to a child’s physical, mental, and social development. Play empowers children by enhancing their fine and gross motor coordination skills. It also enables them to engage in trial and error behavior without strict rules, encouraging them to investigate and explore ideas and new boundaries, try new activities and take risks, make decisions and engage in critical thinking to determine what feels best to them (and what doesn’t!). Play also promotes thinking outside the box with divergent and creative thinking. And group play promotes social interaction and nurtures the capacity to understand different types of people, learning to engage with patience and without judgment. When children have the ability to control their play environment and choose their favorite activities, it builds their sense of resilience and confidence.  

When parents play with their children in an unstructured manner that allows them to self-direct how they play without fear of judgment, they enter their child’s imagination and become an integral part of their development. Adults playing with children also facilitates language building and communication skills that enable kids to express and articulate their thoughts and feelings through their imaginative play and foster closer emotional bonds. As a child’s self-esteem becomes enhanced through play, they will become better problem solvers, more independent, and more content. The role of the parent thus becomes to create safe environments that are conducive to open-ended play.

Group play is critical to building empathy, which is the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes. Empathy is essential to civic engagement. Pretend and role play was our largest and most popular category at Melissa & Doug. Through taking on a new role, children naturally adopt the perspective of that person, developing a sensitivity for how others live and act. Through creating pretend play situations, kids learn how to put themselves in another’s shoes and make decisions as that character. They invent new scenarios involving that character, solve imaginary problems, and develop critical thinking skills. They begin to comprehend how the world works and functions, which helps them to be a more aware community member as they mature. Role play also involves working with and negotiating with others to come to agreements about who will play different roles in this imaginary world. These scenarios also enable kids to express their authentic feelings and integrate them into their scenarios. This helps them to better communicate their emotions throughout their lives in whatever they choose to do.  

When children engage and interact with their peers through creative play, they are able to share a piece of themselves with others. In creating fun scenarios that enable everyone to be seen and heard, they learn how to interact with all sorts of different types of people. To play well together, they learn how to communicate through listening to others and taking turns. They also begin to understand the importance of sacrifice for the good of the group as a whole.  These skills are essential to being an engaged member of a community as they mature.  

If we prioritize creative play, especially its social aspects, it will naturally lead to honing the very skills necessary to develop civically minded and engaged children and adults. Prioritizing diversity in play is crucial to allowing kids to become familiar with individuals from different backgrounds. This helps them to better accept and understand diverse types, which helps them avoid stereotyping and believe in the power of equality.

Civics Toolbox: How Much Do You Already Know?

Bouncing off the idea of “play”, I’m beyond excited to officially kick us off with two short quizzes to refresh our basic civic knowledge.

My dad became a US citizen before I was born. In 2018, a survey by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation showed that only 19% of adults 45 or younger would be able to pass the test to become a US citizen.

Here are two short quizzes by Scholastic and PBS to test your knowledge.

Happy Friday!

More soon,

Sarah