Instead of sitting down and learning the alphabet, my 4-year-old son would rather be outside playing with sticks -- pretending to be a knight with a sword, a wizard with a wand or maybe Luke Skywalker with a light saber.

For the longest time, I worried that he would never learn how to write his name or count past 10, that we weren’t strict enough, that he spent too much time playing pretend.

That’s why I felt some relief last month when I heard this report on National Public Radio. “Old Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills” was about the benefits of imaginative play and how it teaches our children how to practice self-control, think creatively and solve problems.

“Self-regulation is a critical skill for kids,” according to the NPR report. “Unfortunately, most kids today spend a lot of time doing three things: watching television, playing video games and taking lessons. None of these activities promote self-regulation.”

The merits of pretend play also have gone by the wayside with the current emphasis on testing and accountability in our schools.

“It seems that in the rush to give children every advantage — to protect them, to stimulate them, to enrich them — our culture has unwittingly compromised one of the activities that helped children most,” said reporter Alix Spiegel. “All that wasted time was not such a waste after all.”

(The researchers interviewed weren’t too excited about Star Wars, by the way. The ideal imaginative play, they said, shouldn’t be focused on toys and the “commercialization of play.” Until 1955, play was about activity and not about toys, apparently. So much for Luke Skywalker…)

What kinds of activities or games do your kids play? As a kid, do you remember playing pretend?

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