Child Psych Podcast Episode #134

[Tammy Schamuhn]Hello everyone, and welcome to the Child Psych Podcast. My name is Tammy Schamuhn, and I’m a registered psychologist, a registered play therapist, and a mom to three amazing kids. Today we have the very well-known Dr. Stuart Brown. This is one of my idols in the field of psychology, psychiatry, and child development. He’s a pioneering psychiatrist, clinical researcher, and the founder of the National Institute for Play. He’s widely regarded as one of the foremost experts in the science of play. And as you know, if you follow our podcast and our clinical work, we are huge advocates of play at the Institute of Child Psychology. With the Child Psych Podcast, Dr. Brown has spent decades studying the vital role play has in human development, creativity, and emotional well-being. His groundbreaking book Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul draws attention to how essential—non-optional—play is for healthy human functioning across the lifespan.

He’s been featured on the TED stage, which is where I fell in love with his TED Talks. Everyone needs to watch it this instant—just go and download it and spend time watching it over and over. He’s also been featured in The New York Times, NPR, National Geographic, and his research continues to influence educators, therapists, and organizations. So thank you so much, Dr. Brown, for joining us today. And we have your daughter and your granddaughter also with us in this podcast. We have Mia and Lauren who are also with us. So thank you all—we figured it out, we got this going today. Thank you all for being here.

[Dr. Stuart Brown] Thank you for having us. It’s great to be here.

[Tammy] Yeah. And I was saying before we started recording that I’ve been following Dr. Brown’s work for far longer than I care to admit. As a play therapist, this is how I justify a lot of the work that I have done and why Tania and I push so much for play in every course that we teach at the institute. It’s a vital component, and every time I teach play, we talk about your study and your TED talks on both the Texas Tower mass murder, which is a little less positive, but also the study you discovered on rats that I think—and we’ll get into this—shows how play affects survival responses. So I mean, it’s just such an honor. I just can’t say that enough.

[Dr. Stuart Brown] Oh, thank you. We’re honored to be here too, with what you’re doing. You’re doing good stuff. So thank you.

[Tammy] Yeah, I really appreciate that. I just—I don’t even know where to start. I love your work so much. So I’m going to jump right into the work that I discovered through your TED talks, and I think everyone should really watch this to get a full understanding of how vital play is, not just to humans, but to all mammals. And that was really interesting to me because I run an animal-assisted therapy program with all different kinds of animals, and we know this by having animals—if they don’t play, things don’t go right. So this was just a big aha moment for me. But what’s so interesting to me, Dr. Brown, is how you stumbled across this research. This is where it just blew my mind, because this was not your original area of study. Can you tell us a little bit about this? In the 1960s, correct?

The Shocking Discovery: How Play Deprivation Links to Violence
[Dr. Stuart Brown] Well, it was a long time ago—1966. I was just finishing my second residency when a young man, unknown to the authorities, climbed the University of Texas tower in Austin, Texas with an armory. With that armory, he proceeded to kill 14 people total, including his wife and mother, whom he had killed the night before. And this man had no history, as far as anyone knew, of any legal or illegal acts. So the governor of Texas organized a symposium and a commission to study his life and death, because he was killed on top of the tower by vigilante individuals who heroically ended his life to stop this tragedy.
Well, to make a long story short, there was a very intensive study of his life, death, and his background. And one of the things that came out again and again that impressed me in this study was that the psychiatrists and other developmentalists who had followed his lifespan realized he didn’t play. His violent impulses, which he had harbored and hidden from others but which were present in some of his diary writings, had been present for a very long time and suddenly burst forth through serious stresses, leading to this immense tragedy.

Well, that subsequently led to another study that I did for a year with a group of researchers into the Texas prison system to study homicidal males, to see whether or not some of the same patterns were present in their lives as compared to Charles Whitman, who was the tower murderer. And lo and behold, we found that play deprivation was a serious difference in the lives of the homicidal individuals in the Texas prison system as compared to 300 matched controls.
So the question then was, well, what in the world does play have to do with violence? And that’s been a long story, but my long career since then has looked at play—the evolution of play behavior in animals that are playful, the evolution of play behavior as best we can understand it in humans, and the effects of play or its absence on the life cycle of the rest of us. So yeah, that’s a long response, but that’s kind of a vignette of how I got started in this.

[Tammy] I’ll tell you a story—an aha moment I just had while you were talking. Many of you know I run an animal-assisted therapy ranch, so kids come out here and work with animals. We had to sell a horse very recently who was showing some really odd behaviors—really aggressive behaviors—but he was very loving with us. However, he would do things that I’ve never seen a horse do, like very odd behavior. So we knew this program was just not a good fit for him because he had these moments of being violent. They were far and few between, but enough that it just wasn’t safe.

So I went and talked to his breeder last night just to say, “We’re trying to figure this out. What’s going on?” And I said, “You know, when he was young, where was he raised?” And she said, “He wasn’t raised with any other foals—baby horses. He was only raised with the father and the mother. There were no other young horses to interact with.” And I thought, “Oh,” and it’s so timely that I was meeting with you, because we see this in animals. When they don’t have that interaction, they don’t read social cues in the same way. They have big expressions of emotions that are either completely receding anxiety—they don’t come out, and we’ll talk about your study that you discovered on rats—they don’t come out of hiding, they’re very anxious, or they’re really aggressive. They don’t know how to modulate their impulses. It’s just behavior.

[Dr. Stuart Brown] That’s a brilliant segue for me to say that none of the 26 murderers we studied in the Texas prison system engaged in what I would call normal developmental rough-and-tumble play that starts early and continues right up into adolescence, which is a trajectory of social learning—how to behave, who is your friend, whether you’re fast or slow. Regardless of your temperament, you learn how to deal with the complexities of human behavior in part through rough-and-tumble play. And if the horses haven’t had it, or even rats haven’t had it, they don’t socialize properly and they can’t tell friend from foe. You can control animal play and get some of the same results as you describe in your wayward horse

[Tammy] I know. And what can you do, right? It just wasn’t safe with kids. But, you know, this is a great person who trained this horse. He came from a loving home, but that’s the missing link. And I’m going to have to call her and tell her this—we figured it out. I was interviewing someone and my light bulb went off in my head. It was that little bit of information she gave me last night as I was leaving her farm.

So what I often talk to parents and teachers and educators about is anxiety. It’s a big one. And one of the things we always advocate for is for children to learn to adapt in this world—to adversity, to trauma, to being in a classroom with kids their age, you know, to play in team sports. Play has to be a precursor because I always think of it as almost like a vaccination against anxiety. They learn how to tolerate stress. But how I really hit this home was through your TED talk, where you talk about the study on rats. Can you please tell our audience about this?

[Dr. Stuart Brown] Well, if you control rat play, which can be done—rats are very playful, particularly from four to 15 weeks of age—they engage largely in rough-and-tumble play, which has been quantified beautifully by rat researchers. A guy named Sergio Pellis and Jaak Panksepp, up to Burgdorf—there are some pioneers in rat play who have come up with the observation that when they control rat play, when they stop the rat from playing completely and then put them into a social setting, they can’t tell friend from foe, they don’t mate, they don’t socialize properly. They’re either hyper aggressive or they’re isolative. So the learning curve for rat socialization requires rough-and-tumble or normal play behavior.

And if you look at the long stream of human understanding about play and development, you can see that some of those linkages are also present in us. We’re not rats and we have a different cerebral cortex and a very different breeding process, but the fundamentals of play are there in humans and in rats—in the brain stem and in subcortical areas of wiring that have been there for hundreds of thousands, and probably millions, of years.

The Rat Study: How Play Builds Resilience
[Tammy] Well, in your study you referenced—I don’t know if it was done out of Berkeley or Stanford, where it was doesn’t matter. It was done at a prestigious university, and in this particular study, the rats were deprived of play and then there was the control group that obviously played—they were allowed to do the rough-and-tumble. But what was interesting to me that you cited was when you introduced a stressful stimulus, and I think it was a cat collar—it was the smell of a cat collar.

[Dr. Stuart Brown] The smell of a cat, which instinctively produces fear and withdrawal from normal rats. It’s a stress response.

[Tammy] Yeah. So what would happen is the rats that were allowed to play would come out of hiding, but the ones that didn’t play—so there was no rough-and-tumble play—would die from dehydration, many of them.

[Dr. Stuart Brown] Well, they just didn’t adapt to being safe again. So there’s no cat odor around, but they stayed hidden or withdrawn, whereas the playful rats had more resiliency, more capacity to adapt to the new circumstances quickly.

[Mia Sundstrom] Yeah, too—sorry, just one thing to add. One of those preliminary studies by Jaak Panksepp that was really, really groundbreaking was when he actually removed the cortex of a group of rats and then compared that to a control group that had their cortex still intact. The rats in both groups played the same way. And that was the key to understanding that play resides subcortically in the brain stem and that it is a biologically hardwired response that is motivationally intrinsic. When you remove that higher-level thinking, our brains are not all that dissimilar from the basic wiring of a rat brain. Understanding that play is subcortically wired and then doing all these subsequent studies to understand the behaviors of rats as they play and what happens when they don’t—that fundamental understanding of the subcortical location of play is what catapulted so much of Dr. Brown’s work as well. So I just wanted to mention that piece of the study.

[Tammy] Yeah, that’s well said. And now I know that they did look at the brains, and they did look different—the brains of the rats that had played versus the ones that hadn’t played. So we need this inoculation to stress, as I call it. Kids need to experience stress in small, manageable amounts through play where they start to learn their limitations, and they need to learn to read social cues from their friends—when to stop, when to start—so they want to keep the play going. What other things, Dr. Brown, in your research have you found in terms of brain development? How does play really build the brain of our kids?

[Dr. Stuart Brown] Well, I think the most quantifiable research has been done in animals, but the Romanian orphans, for example, who were horribly abused and isolated and then followed for life, have shown retardation and tremendous difficulties. It’s not just play deprivation—it’s deprivation of all kinds of socialization—but the play repair of some of those kids… Fraser Brown, who’s a researcher who has written about them, writes that those who were relieved of some of the isolation rebounded and did fairly well. So it’s not necessarily a horribly permanent situation if play can be reintroduced in a healthy way.
But, you know, part of it is like language learning. Little kids learn language slowly. They pick it up from those around them. The rough-and-tumble play and the complexities of play and the adaptive capability of play are things that are learned progressively and occur as development occurs normally. And when that deprivation is severe, it has long-term effects on empathy and optimism and the kinds of thinking and feeling that a non-playful child has going into their later years. So it is a tremendously important element. You can’t be fully human if you don’t play.

Defining Play: From Childhood Freedom to Adult Fulfillment
[Tammy] I think you have a couple of quotes that I love from you: “Nothing lights up the brain like play does,” and then “The opposite of play is not work—it’s depression.” And it was Brené Brown who was following you for a long time, and actually she was the one who kind of pointed me to you and then your TED talks and so on and so forth. She talked about play—adult play—for shame resilience, that if adults don’t play, they tend to get quite engrossed in shame, which most people know what shame is. It’s the feeling of not being good enough—that’s what shame is—like we’re deficient in some way. But, you know, a lot of parents say, “Oh, I don’t play anymore because, you know, that’s kids’ play.” And I said, “No, no, no—adults need to play too,” and the research would indicate that that’s really good. How do you define play when you’re past the childhood stage of development? How do we look at that play?

[Dr. Stuart Brown] Well, I think most of us know what works for us—to take us outside of a sense of time pressure, to do something for its own sake, to do something voluntarily, to do something without worry about what the outcome of what we’re doing is, and which in the process produces mood change and produces a sense of well-being. That’s play. And I think, you know, our culture honors performance and getting into Harvard or Princeton if you’re a kid, and getting straight A’s and so on, rather than saying, “Wait a minute, maybe engaging in something that gives you playfulness and joy is part of the way to really have a successful and fulfilling life.” So following your play personality, which my granddaughter has done beautifully, is something that is not necessarily honored as much in our culture as I think the biology of play itself has taught me is necessary. And, you know, I’ve got my daughter, who I probably pushed a little too hard when she was younger because I wasn’t as erudite about play back then as I am now, but she turned out pretty well.

[Lauren Brown Sundstrom] Yeah. You know, I think one of the really interesting things about this story is that it’s not that play and Harvard have to be diametrically opposed. I mean, what’s really interesting is when kids are allowed to really pursue what they love, it tends to lead them toward wanting a sense of mastery. So I think that’s one of the key things, and I’m just really happy that as a parent—I’m sure I made a ton of mistakes—but knowing, having been given the permission to allow Mia and her brother just the permission to follow their players… and it’s definitely a leap of faith in this era of hard-driving academics and other things. You know, kids have been overscheduled. I feel like that’s starting to get a little bit better. But I think one of the messages for your parent group here is just, you know, science has your back. Like, let your kids play. This is what they’re meant to do.

[Tammy] Yeah. It’s funny. My son is a really avid soccer player. Like, he’s only eight, though. And I know the research on organized activities—they don’t benefit a lot till 11 or 12. So I’m like, “No, I don’t want to push him when he’s so young.” And we’re watching him on the soccer field and he just loves it. And he’s one of the top players on his team, and he’s on a rec team versus a club team. And parents were watching and they said, “Why isn’t your son playing competitive soccer?” And I said, “Because he needs to be a kid right now. He’s eight. He doesn’t need to be in an organized sport a week where they’re pushing them to win and compete. Right now, he loves soccer because he loves soccer. He doesn’t care if he wins. He just loves to play and he’s doing it for the sake of it. And he loves being with other kids and being outside.” But I said, “If we go down the route of pushing him and it becomes about our agenda, it no longer becomes play, and he doesn’t then get the same benefit.”

[Dr. Stuart Brown] He’s lucky to have you as a mom.

[Tammy] Well, I had people like you who I could follow their research and be like, “This is the thing.” Like, what is play? And I guess maybe before I go into your play personalities, because that’s really interesting to me, is how do you—now we define play for adults as being, you know, somewhere you lose track of time. You do it just because you love it. It’s not necessarily goal-oriented. You just do it because you have this passion for it, which I was kind of talking about with my son. You know, for kiddos, parents will assume that play could be like art lessons and music, and I’m always like, “No, it’s child-centered play.” So how do you define that? Because parents will kind of go down some of the route of organized activities, and I’m like, “So how do you define play for younger kids?”

[Dr. Stuart Brown] Well, I’m gonna let Mia try that one because I think she followed her bliss and was allowed to get into gymnastics, which worked for her. But, you know, it’s different for most everybody. So finding what is the engaging, glee-producing formula for your kids is kind of up to them. And your son has already done it. Now he may change and become interested in some other sport other than soccer when he’s 15. But now he’s got a blissful experience that’s playful that sounds really positive to me, and you’ve allowed that to happen. You’re not worrying about how many goals he makes.

[Tammy] Yeah. And I think too with kids, it’s just kind of—and Mia, I’d love to hear what you have to say about this—providing just the space for him and all of my kids to just create, where we get out of the way. We didn’t press organized sports with him until honestly last year when we put him in organized sports. We didn’t have our hands off—he was playing soccer in the backyard before then and with friends outside and at school. But it’s just presenting as much space and creativity for them to figure out what they love. To me, that’s play. Like when they’re little, they don’t need to be organized. They just need a basement full of crafting supplies and Legos and a basketball and a tree outside to climb. But Mia, what’s that like for you when we think about play? Like when you say that you followed your play personality, can you speak to that?

[Mia Sundstrom] Yeah, absolutely. I think what’s interesting is that elusive definition of play—this alternate state of being and the loss of sense of time and the sort of purposelessness about it—and the biological and brain outcomes that come from being in that state are really similar for an adult and a kid, right? And to your point about the organization piece: for some people, organized play and having some structure may enable them to enter that state more easily. And for some people, that might be like a total rejection of a play state—that organized play.

And so I think what Dr. Brown has done so well in his work, and what has enabled me to understand first and then to follow my play personality, is identifying these eight sort of predilections to certain types of play that he has discovered over taking thousands and thousands of play histories of all sorts of different types of people. Each person’s play personality is a fingerprint. It’s totally unique to them. It may evolve over time, right? As things happen, as people experience trauma or changes in relationships or whatnot. But if we can understand, from a young child, what is that predilection to triggering that play state that is so hard to describe but that he’s done an amazing job of describing?

And so the eight play personalities: The first one is the Joker, right? So playing through humor and silliness and whatnot. The second is the Kinesthete. That’s me. Sounds like that might be your son. Playing through movement, right? And that’s something that they found in me and enabled me to nurture and foster throughout my life. And I became a competitive gymnast all the way through college at the Division One level. And yet, all the way until the last day that I did it, I did it for its own sake, not for the outcomes. Even when I was getting paid to do it, right? And so enabling that kind of thing was amazing for me in my life. And for some people, that’s not it.

So the next play personality is the Explorer—you know, curiosity and discovery, whether that’s physical, emotional, mental. Then there’s the Competitor. So that might be somebody where games and rules and a clear win-loss might actually help foster a state of play. There’s the Director, so being the one to organize and plan things enters the state of play. There’s the Collector—collecting things, objects or whatnot.

[Tammy] I have two of those at home. Two of those kids are combined with the Collector and the Artist. Yeah, it’s messy. It gets very messy in our house very quickly.

[Mia Sundstrom] And I think you bring up a good point, right? Like, nobody is set with one play personality. A lot of times there’s overlapping categories, and yeah, I would guess that the Artist and the Collector overlap quite frequently because those two can kind of be melded and whatnot. And then, finally, there’s the Storyteller. And I think my grandpa would tell you over time that he has evolved into a Storyteller because he has some pretty awesome stories to tell.

[Tammy] Yeah. I definitely am a combination between the Creator and the Storyteller. Like, I love writing. I love interviewing and speaking. But then also, I do all our social media. So I love making graphics and anything that can make videos or anything that can depict visually something appealing for people to, you know, increase their engagement and their learning. And I love, love, love that I got to do that as part of my job.

[Lauren Brown Sundstrom] Yeah, that’s fantastic. I mean, that’s the idea if you can—you know, a lot of people can’t weave that into their work—but it’s fantastic that you’ve been able to do that. And it’s interesting that your play personality is a little bit different from your kids. I often wondered about that. I thought, “Gosh, if I’d been just a musician and that’s all I was doing, would Mia still have been a gymnast? Would she still have found her way there?” You know, it’s always an interesting question.

[Tammy] Well, he gets it from his dad. Like, that’s definitely his dad. But he’s also a bit of a creator, too. So it’s interesting to see how that component of him comes out. And I know the girls—their stepdaughters—and that comes from their mom, like their mom’s very much an artist. So that’s no surprise there. So, you know, I encourage everyone—if you purchase, and I will have a link to Dr. Brown’s work along with the National Institute for Play, right? The book talks about this in much more detail, by the way. Like, it goes into each one of these personalities: the Joker, the—how do we say it?

[Lauren Brown Sundstrom] Kinesthete. We just say Mover because it’s easier for people to understand.

[Tammy] Explorer, Competitor, Director, Collector, Artist-Creator, and Storyteller. Those are our eight, right?

[Lauren Brown Sundstrom] The website actually has a lot of other information on the play personalities too, so it’s kind of a great—we’re trying to create a big library so everyone gets this message so that when parents are out there, it’s a lot easier for them to be able to say, “Hey, let my kid play.”

[Dr. Stuart Brown] You know, one of the things that I think is difficult for adults is to give priority to their own play personality. And, you know, one of the things that parents do for kids is to keep their own play life active. And for them to keep their play life active, they kind of have to be true to who they really are. So part of my life as a clinician was spent in guiding people—not enough—but in guiding people toward being really aware of something deep in them that gives them a sense of engagement and freedom, which is their play nature. And when they give that priority, that is contagious to their kids, even if the kids have a different play personality than their parents. So I think keeping up priorities and prioritizing play in adulthood is, to my way of thinking, a public health necessity.