Theories..Imagination....Play...Me!!

So this next assignment is hard. Developmental psychology, pick a theorist of psychology and analyse their theories and relate them into your own life starting with how something in your childhood has impacted or moulded you for adulthood.

Far out. 

It been a week and a half and i was stumped. I have researched my psychologist and his theories but for some reason couldn't pin point a memory or a glimmer of something that has crossed over or impacted me from childhood to adulthood.......

My mind has been racing i cant switch off as I'm trying to search in my memory bank for that one thing......

Then it came to me. I put up the holiday calender on the wall of the activities the boys are doing, rugby clinics, cross country training, kindy, drive in night, trip up the coast to see my dad, heaps of stuff around the house needs doing..........SCHOOL HOLIDAYS!!

Every single school holidays for me from the age of 5-11 (for roughly 6 years) I spent being a mum, i would open up a pretend shop, and i would load my bike up and pretend to travel around Australia. I had the most vivid imagination. I could never sit still, as soon as i would wake up every single day of the school holidays i had a plan. If i pretended i was a mum to my dolls, i would put them to bed and make dinner with my tea set, i would pretend to make beds, was clothes in a bucket and hang them out. I was role playing a role that i looked forward to but wasn't old enough to realise.
If i played shops i would have a cash register and sell my drawings to my mum or dad, or at one stage i created a drive through where i pretended to make food to sell to the people driving by. Obviously this was my sub conscience getting me ready for my adult life of working really hard for 19 years at the one job.

It was me as a young child wanting to juggle working and being a mother,  i was trying to role play finding a balance from the age of 5-11. To provide and nurture at the same time. 

I couldn't sit still long enough to watch a movie on the holidays or just lay on the lounge and do nothing, i would still be playing when mum would call us for dinner at 6pm. I would only stop for lunch. My bike was my transport and my imagination was everything. As i got older, I strived to do well, and nothing was ever to hard, if i didn't get it the first time i usually got it the 2nd or 3rd time. I got my licence first go and i walked up to the local shops at 13 & 8 months and got my first part time job. Before i left school i sent out 32 resumes to salons to try and have a back up plan in case i wanted a year off from studying/uni and i only had 2 interviews with Stefan and i was employed and i still had 3 weeks of grade 12 left. 

I think this has all stemmed back from the imagination and play based child i was growing up. I often think if sport was "really" pushed in my family would i have given that a crack as well? I played club netball but didn't go any further......

There was also no social media back then to so i think imagination and play was so much more common. Looking back I honestly think it shaped me to be the mother/wife/worker that i am today. As i child i strived to be all those things and i knew that's what i wanted.

So Lev Vygotsky i fit into your theories that Imaginative play is essential in cognitive development., but it is fast becoming endangered by our busy lives. Children now days who spend to much time watching TV or or electrical devices are not developing the language and reasoning skills that are so critical to early childhood development. 

Now to write my 2500 assignment!!! Thanks Vygotsky ....Now boys go and play....... XX