Meeting of the Parliament 14 March 2017
One of my favourite programmes when I was growing up was “Why Don’t You?” which challenged us to switch off the television and go and do something more useful instead. It gave lots of ideas about how to play. That was really important for me and my younger brothers as we were growing up. Suddenly our world was given a new horizon. We could go into the back garden and see it not as only a back garden, but as many different things. Many happy hours were played there.
I welcome Play Scotland here this evening and apologise that I will not be going to its reception because I will be rushing off to play with my children at home after this debate.
I touch now on a slightly different area, because some parents do not know how to play with their children or how to encourage their children to play.
When my two young girls were slightly younger, we used to go to an organisation called Dads Rock here in Edinburgh. Dads Rock was set up to encourage fathers to play with their children. There is still a legacy from many decades back that means that fathers perhaps do not interact and play with their children as well as mothers do. On a Saturday morning, Dads Rock simply brought together children and their fathers and gave them tools and a framework to learn to play. It worked really well. Not only were we allowed a snack, which my wife would never let us have at home, we actually got to play with toys and books, and we were given a framework within which to do that. The only sad thing was that although the organisation was located in a more deprived part of the city, it was middle class people coming in from middle class areas who benefited from its free service.
When we talk about play, we need to look at how we encourage all fathers and mothers, whatever their background, to interact and to take the time to play with their children. We all live very busy lives. We all have emails to answer and work to do in the house. We all have pressing demands on us. I suspect that, too often, playing with our children drops down our agenda. We need to send out the message that, if the washing is not done just when it should have been done because people are playing with their children, that is a sacrifice worth making.
The second area that I want to cover has already been mentioned by two members, and that is the playing out scheme in Edinburgh. I too attended the event last year. If we can recapture that, even in a limited situation, and close streets off so that children can again learn to play on the street with each other and with parental supervision and input, we will start to break down barriers.
I thank Ruth Maguire for lodging the motion and highlighting a really important issue, and I wish Play Scotland all the best as it moves forward along with other organisations and seeks to encourage us all, whether we are grandparents, parents, uncles or aunts, to play with children and to encourage them to play in appropriate ways.
17:37