Adults, don’t forget yourselves in all of this. Play is necessary for you too, and helps to improve health and wellness, relieve stress, build new knowledge, maintain focus, and strengthen relationships.

At Chicago Children’s Museum we have a “secret sauce” of sorts that guides us in making decisions about our programs and exhibits. It is a concept called Universal Pursuits of Childhood, in which we identify the experiences that children across time, gender, and geography, need, want, and love to do.

When it comes to play, children are often naturals—but grownups play a significant role in nurturing and facilitating those valuable experiences. Adults can support play in the following ways.

The benefits of play have been well-documented to positively impact every domain of a child’s development: cognitive, physical, social, emotional, and language. In times of distress, play is even more critical. Why?

This is a time of back-to-basics, focusing on the essentials of our families’ well-being: food, shelter, health, and security.

More than ever, parents and caregivers are seeking ways to best care for and engage their children, within the new context of sheltering-in-place, no school, and no community activities.