343. Parkour and Rough Play: Combatting Infantilization | Rafe Kelley
Mar 27, 2023
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Rafe Kelley, an entrepreneur and parkour expert, discusses the pivotal role of rough-and-tumble play in childhood development. He shares personal experiences with ADHD and how play transformed his education and life. The conversation emphasizes balancing protective parenting with adventurous exploration, the impact of technology on play, and the significance of parks and outdoor activities. Rafe also highlights how parkour encourages creativity and adaptability, promoting resilience and emotional growth in children through playful interactions.
Rough and tumble play is crucial for children's early developmental stages, fostering pro-social behavior and helping with emotion regulation.
Rafe Kelly shares his personal experience of being diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, and how rough and tumble play, along with martial arts, helped him regulate his emotions and develop empathy.
Teaching people how to play requires a constraints-led approach, gradually introducing limitations and targets to foster safe and mutually beneficial competitive play, promoting social competence and physical limits understanding.
Parkour, a transformative practice involving overcoming obstacles and exploring the environment, helps individuals develop physical strength, agility, courage, fear management, and the ability to turn walls and obstacles into opportunities for growth.
Unstructured play is essential for children's development, promoting self-organization, infinite games, curiosity, exploration, problem-solving skills, and overall well-being.
Deep dives
Importance of Rough and Tumble Play in Early Development
Rough and tumble play is crucial for children's early developmental stages, fostering pro-social behavior and helping with emotion regulation. It allows kids to learn fundamental social skills and act in a reciprocal and social manner.
Personal Testimony: How Rough and Tumble Play Transformed a Troubled Childhood
Rafe Kelly shares his personal experience of being diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, and how rough and tumble play, along with martial arts, helped him regulate his emotions and develop empathy. His mentor's role in encouraging rough and tumble play was instrumental in his healing process.
Importance of Rough and Tumble Play for Social and Emotional Development
Rough and tumble play is not only crucial for developing physical skills, but also for building emotional regulation, empathy, and social competence. It allows children to learn and navigate boundaries in a safe and controlled environment, leading to healthier relationships and mature conflict resolution.
Constraints-led Approach in Play Education
In teaching people how to play, a constraints-led approach is utilized. By gradually introducing constraints and limitations, such as specific targets and restricted motion, participants can engage in competitive play that is safe and mutually beneficial. This approach enables the development of social competence, attunement, and the understanding of physical limits.
Parkour as a Transformational Practice
Parkour, a discipline that originated in France in the late 90s, is a transformative practice that involves overcoming obstacles and exploring the environment. It is not limited to jumping between buildings but includes running, climbing, and moving on all fours. Parkour helps individuals develop physical strength and agility, as well as courage and fear management. By practicing parkour, individuals are able to map meaning into the world, turning walls and obstacles into opportunities for movement and growth. Parkour also offers a unique experience of acting out the heroic archetype, pushing participants to confront and overcome their fears while simultaneously improving their physical and mental skills.
The Importance of Generalization in Parkour
While parkour can be a transformative practice, its full transformative potential is often not realized. This is because parkour is often treated as only a local game, focusing solely on physical skills and challenges. However, for parkour to have a deeper impact, it needs to be integrated into a larger metagame that encompasses other important practices. These practices include internal self-integration, connection with nature, object manipulation, and interactive practices with other people. By integrating parkour with these practices, individuals can cultivate wisdom, resilience, and character development in a more holistic and comprehensive way.
The Role of Encouragement and Risk in Child Development
Child development benefits greatly from encouraging play and allowing children to take risks. In our culture, there is a tendency to limit children's play and create unnecessary fears, inhibiting their growth and resilience. Parents can support their children by providing a balance between nurturance and encouragement. Fathers, in particular, can play a crucial role in facilitating the exploration of physical challenges and pushing children to overcome their fears. By creating a safe environment for rough and tumble play, fathers help children build confidence, physical competence, and emotional resilience. It is important for fathers and mothers to recognize and value their unique strengths in nurturing and encouraging their children's overall development.
The Power of Physical Practices in Personal Transformation
Physical practices, such as parkour, martial arts, and connecting with nature, have a transformative effect on individuals. These practices offer a multi-dimensional experience that combines physical movement, group cohesion, and connection to the natural world. Through these practices, individuals can push themselves to their limits, experience intense physical sensations, and develop a deeper connection with their bodies. The process of engaging in physical practices helps individuals mature and develop their frontal cortex, leading to improved attention and focus. By engaging in physical practices that involve play, individuals can explore boundaries, develop bite inhibition, and learn to calibrate their responses, leading to greater self-control and adaptability.
The Importance of Unstructured Play and Self-Generated Games
The current societal trend of replacing unstructured play with structured activities is detrimental to children's development. Unstructured play allows children to self-organize and create infinite games that sustain and reward their curiosity and exploration. In contrast, structured activities with imposed win conditions restrict the play drive and hinder the development of self-sustaining games. By eliminating recess and imposing structured play, society is limiting children's ability to move their bodies, explore their physical capabilities, and develop important social skills. Allowing children to engage in unstructured play fosters their physical and cognitive development, enhances their problem-solving skills, and promotes their overall well-being.
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, joined by movement and parkour expert Rafe Kelley, discuss the importance of rough-and-tumble play for developing children, how a lifestyle centered around movement can expand our grasp and involvement with the natural world, and why society should value masculine activities, rather than adhering to the push for feminization in all aspects of modern life.
Rafe Kelley is an entrepreneur and advocate for a lifestyle centered around human movement. He suffered at a young age from ADHD, causing him to struggle in school. As it would happen, he came into contact with a mentor who recognized his need for play, encouraged time in nature, and taught him to productively roughhouse. This quickly resulted in Kelley advancing in his studies, launching him on his life path. In college, he studied anthropology and evolutionary biology, falling in love with martial arts and parkour along the way. He would go on to establish the first parkour gym on the west coast, Parkour Visions, before developing a new fitness lifestyle based on primal movement that Kelley calls “Evolve, Move, Play.”
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- Links -
For Rafe Kelley:
Join Rafe on an Evolve Move Play retreat: https://www.evolvemoveplay.com/retreats/
Rafe on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rafekelley/?hl=en
Rafe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/rafekelley
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