#12. Age-Mixed Play III: Play is More Playful When it is Age-Mixed

When children who differ widely in age play a game together, the focus shifts from winning to having fun.

This is my third and final letter on the special value of age-mixed play among children and teens. In the first letter (#10) my thesis was that children learn more in play with those who differ from them in age than in play with age-mates. In the second letter (#11) it was that age-mixed play is especially valuable for social development. My thesis now is that age-mixed play is less competitive, more creative, and more conducive to experimentation than is age-segregated play. In short, age-mixed play is more fully playful than age-segregated play.

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The examples I present here come from research that Jay Feldman and I conducted years ago at the Sudbury Valley School, a democratic school where children and teens, from age 4 on up are free to mingle at will throughout the school day. The full published report on that research is available here.

Age Mixing Enhances the Joy and Creativity of Play.

When children who are all nearly the same age play a game, competitiveness can interfere with playfulness. This is especially true in our current culture, which puts so much emphasis on winning and comparisons aimed at determining who is better, an emphasis fostered by our competitive school system and our habit of putting even young children into competitive sports and contests.

In contrast, when children who differ widely in age play a game together, the focus shifts from winning to having fun. There is no pride to be gained by the older, larger, more skilled child in beating the younger one, and the younger one has no expectation of beating the older one. So, they play the game more joyfully, in a more relaxed manner, modifying the rules in ways to make it both fun and challenging for all involved. A playful mood facilitates creativity and experimentation, while a serious mood tends to inhibit these and leads a person to fall back on skills that have already been well learned.

Even when children are playing an ostensibly competitive game, creativity and joy overwhelm competition when the players differ widely in age. Feldman and I recorded many examples of that. Here is one:

"In an age-mixed game of capture the flag, one team, the Big People, consisted of three teenagers and one 11-year-old, and the other team, the Hordes, consisted of ten 4- to 8-year-olds and one 12-year-old. Larry (age 4) would often run across the line and get captured by Sam (age 17) in an act that included lots of tickling and carrying of Larry in mock combat.

“After Larry was set down, he would prance merrily back to his side, without going to jail. Often one or more of the Big People would cross into the Hordes' territory not to go after the flag but simply to run around with a gang of small children chasing them. Nobody seemed to be much focused on winning, but when the Hordes did finally capture the flag, they cheered loudly." [And, I might add, the Big People seemed to share their joy.]

Board games and card games, likewise, are played in more playful, creative, non-competitive ways when the players vary widely in age than when they are age-mates. At the time of our research, chess happened to be a fad at the school. Games between closely matched players tended to be quite serious; the players appeared intent on winning. Games between unmatched players, who usually differed widely in age, were more creative and light-hearted.

To make the game interesting, the older players would typically self-handicap in some way, for example by deliberately getting into difficult positions, and would frequently point out better moves to the younger players. The older players seemed to be using such games to experiment with new styles of play, which they were not yet ready to try out in serious games. The games clearly provided novices lessons in how to play chess, but they also provided the more experienced players opportunities for creative experimentation.

The Creativity and Energy of Younger Children Inspires Older Ones.

Here’s a play scene that ranks among my all-time favorites. I’ll present it here, verbatim, as I wrote it in my notebook shortly after the observation.

"I was sitting in the playroom pretending to read a book but surreptitiously observing a remarkable scene. A 13-year-old boy and two 7-year-old boys were creating, purely for their own amusement (as nobody else but me was in the room), a fantastic story involving heroic characters, monsters, and battles. The 7-year-olds gleefully shouted out ideas about what would happen next, while the 13-year-old, an excellent artist, translated the ideas into a coherent story and sketched the scenes on the blackboard almost as fast as the younger children could describe them. The game continued for at least half an hour, which was the length of time I permitted myself to watch before moving on.

"I felt privileged to enjoy an artistic creation that, I know, could not have been produced by 7-year-olds alone and almost certainly would not have been produced by 13-year-olds alone. The unbounded enthusiasm and creative imagery of the 7-year-olds I watched, combined with the advanced narrative and artistic abilities of the 13-year-old they played with, provided just the right chemical mix for this creative explosion to occur."

As they become teens, most children in our culture tend to drop the creative activities of earlier childhood. They commonly stop playing make-believe or creatively with blocks, clay, crayons, and paint. But when younger children playing in these ways are present, the older ones often can’t resist the temptation to join, and then they continue those activities either with the younger ones or without. A regular finding, in surveys, is that a high percentage of graduates of democratic age-mixed schools are successful creative artists. I suspect that age-mixing has much to do with that.

Age Mixing Can Also Be a Means of Matching Abilities.

Throughout these letters on age-mixed play my focus has been on advantages of play among people who differ in ability. I would be amiss, however, not to mention that play with others of similar ability also has advantages, and sometimes one must venture outside of one’s age group to find such others.

In an age-mixed setting, a person who is ahead or behind their age-mates in some realm can find equal partners among older or younger children. The child who is awkward at climbing can play at scrambling up rocks and trees with younger children without feeling constantly left behind and in that way can improve her climbing ability. The talented 11-year-old guitar player can jam with teenagers who are at his level. We observed examples like that, and here’s one we recorded concerning chess.

Twelve-year-old Randy was an excellent chess player. His only chess peers at the school were Jack (age 17), Elana (age 17), and Ken (age 18). All his serious games, with which he measured his own progress, were with these older students. He might practice new moves in games with his age-mates and younger children, but he tested himself in games with students who were five or six years older than himself.

Final Thoughts

This concludes my series of letters about age-mixed play among children and teens. So, now is your chance to present any thoughts or ask any questions you may still have about such play. In my next letter I discuss more extreme age-mixed play—that involving parents and children. When does such play work and when does it not?

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