Recognising the power of play in the Early Years

The LEGO Group, EasyPeasy and Save the Children worked together to deliver a joint project with local partners in Margate to give parents and carers access to appropriate parenting tips and support about play, in a way that is meaningful and accessible to them. Collectively we believe more needs to be done to ensure that all children have equal access to opportunities to benefit from high-quality playful interactions during their early years.

‍Why the early years are critical?
‍Young children’s brains develop faster than any other time of life - more than 1 million neural connections per second!¹ Experiences in the early years – from the bonds children form with their parents and caregivers, to the food they eat, the air they breathe and the way they play and learn - builds children’s brains. It is a critical time for shaping the way children interact with each other and the world , and developing their immune and metabolic systems. Such is the importance of these early years that it has a profound effect on the lives these young children will go on to live; a child’s development at 22 months is a predictor of where they will be educationally at the age of 26. Equally, 20% of the attainment gap at age 16 is already in place before those children turn 5.²

A survey conducted by The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood found that nine in ten people agree the early years are important in shaping a person's future life but less than a fifth recognise the unique importance of children’s development from birth to the age of five.³ The criticality of the early years is similarly not adequately recognised in the attention it is given by policymakers with just 6% of education spend globally focused on the early years, despite 85% of children’s brains developed by this time.⁴

Research shows that every pound spent on early years saves the state £13 pounds in later catch-up interventions. ⁵

‍We urgently need greater recognition of the importance of early years and to rebalance priorities to align with what the evidence is telling us: that investing in the early years makes sense both for our finances, and for ensuring every child has the opportunity to realise their potential. ‍
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‍Why Learning-through-Play is critical?
‍We know that positive, playful interaction is one of the most important ingredients for children to achieve a good level of development by the time they start school. Play is a highly effective way for children to develop communication skills, learn fundamental life skills and form relationships. The benefits of play for learning and development are documented in academic research,⁶⁷ and championed by leading organisations involved in the early years. Research shows that play experiences are not merely fun but have a central role in giving babies and children the opportunity to develop the skills they need to face challenges later on in childhood and through to adulthood. The Department for Education’s Early Years Foundation Stage framework makes clear the extensive role of play as an essential ingredient for a child’s development.

It is therefore essential that children are able to benefit from high-quality Learning-through-Play in all the spaces that they occupy during their crucial early years, whether in childcare, early learning provision, in the outdoors, or in the home. However, children do not have equal access to opportunities for Learning-through-Play. Children from more deprived backgrounds are less likely to be able to access high quality early years provision and their parents are more likely to face challenges to building and maintaining positive and playful home learning environments.

‍We need government and policymakers to give greater recognition to the importance of play, to ensure the inclusion of play in policies and programmes relating to early child development, and to provide more support, guidance and resources to foster these critical playful interactions.‍

‍Why supporting parents is critical?
Parents have a particularly significant influence on children’s early developmental outcomes. Even a child in full time nursery education will still spend significantly more time with parents in and around the home environment. Research by the Royal Foundation Centre Centre for Early Childhood⁸ found that 90% of people see parental mental health and wellbeing as being critical to a child’s development, but in reality people do very little to prioritise themselves. However, only 10% of parents cite caring for their own wellbeing as part of their preparation for the arrival of their baby. Worryingly, over a third of all parents (37%) expect the COVID-19 pandemic to have a negative impact on their long-term mental wellbeing. Compounding matters, the majority of parents (70%) feel judged in their parenting practices by others, and struggle to find sources of support. Such challenges are all the greater for marginalised groups including neurodivergent parents and parents with neurodivergent children, LGBTQIA parents, families of colour, low-income families.

Against such a backdrop, it is essential to ensure an enabling environment to support parents and families to navigate the critical early years.⁹ We know that parents primarily seek support from peers, as opposed to official sources. Professional parenting support is not seen as the norm, and often carries stigma. Its availability is patchy at best, and certainly not universally available. Much of what is on offer is either prohibitively expensive, or too generic to be useful for parents’ unique and changing circumstances. Furthermore we know parents are more likely to seek support for a child’s physical well-being than for their social and emotional development.

An enabling environment to support parents and families in ways that meet their differing needs and circumstances must be a crucial part of prioritising the early years.

THE POWER OF PLAY AND PARENTS IN ACTION
The free EasyPeasy app has been co-designed with parents to inspire positive, playful interactions at home with randomised control trial level impact on parent wellbeing and children’s development and has reached hundreds of thousands of families. The app allows parents, experts, and partners to create and share their own user-generated parenting activities, advice, and hacks, which is moderated by EasyPeasy and then shared to users via an AI powered recommendation engine. In 2021, with Save the Children UK, and the LEGO Group Social Impact team, the partners piloted an ‘in real life’ approach to content generation bringing together eight ‘Family Champions’ from a marginalised community in Margate, in the south east of the UK. Through bringing parents together to share and support each other, and through facilitating an approach to help parents better understand the role they play in their child’s early development, as well as to recognise the expertise and creativity they already possess through their parenting, the pilot generated a powerful strengths based, and peer-led approach to parenting support in the local community. The Family Champions generated over 50 of tips and activity ideas based on their own parenting experiences with children. A number of these parents have neurodiverse children, and were able to share ideas and advice to help them support, play, and care for their children’s specific special educational needs and disabilities - advice highly sought after by other parents with similarities. Family Champions created their own profiles on the EasyPeasy app and shared their advice, parenting hacks, and activity ideas to the wider EasyPeasy user base.
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Now, digital platform ChangeX with support from the Real Play Coalition and the LEGO Foundation’s Community Play Fund, are helping to replicate and scale this Family Champions approach in the UK & Ireland through EasyPeasy Pods: real life meet-ups in the community where parents & carers from diverse backgrounds access resources and support and come together to create and share their own experience and ideas, and add them to the EasyPeasy app. This June, demand in the UK significantly exceeded the availability of funding already by the end of the first day of the launch of LEGO Foundation’s Community Play Fund. By working through partners with reach to key parenting audiences, the approach is already yielding strong results, with the majority of Pod Leaders being from under-represented groups including ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA, parents with neurodiversity, and parents with neurodiverse children. The powerful stories from these early examples in the UK speaks to the impact that can be achieved at scale.