sigh.
But hey, Beatrice drew me a Baby Yoda recently, and that was pretty awesome, because she knows how much I love Star Wars. So yes, we love the fact that they love to draw all the time. Beatrice also creates her own graphic novels (it all started with her story The Dog That Ate the Moon). She also draws creatures all the time, combined animals of a known origin that she describes to us with a fervent excitement. Currently Bryce draws anime-like girls of all rainbow colors and backgrounds, all with big hair ("I like to draw big hair!" she said to me just now).
Always sketching and drawing. And then there's music and dancing; they both love music, Bea plays the flute and Bryce loves to dance (Bea, too, she's just more shy about it). Also, over the years both girls have created various contraptions, doll houses and even an R2-D2 with leftover paper, cardboard, string, plastic -- you name it, they figure out how to use it. We've helped them as well, making these projects more of a family affair at times.
Plus there's lots of exercising, outdoor activities and adventures, chasing jumping and safe roughhousing, as well as dramatic play, playing board games, playing interactive video games, reading books (yes, old-fashioned reading), and so much more. And let's not forget the Kidpower role-playing we've done the past few years to help our girls stay safe, empathic and good at healthy boundary setting.
And now we have a new dog named Jenny to play with. More on her soon!
I share these things because we've known for a long time these "play" activities encourage physical, psychological, emotional, social and lots of synaptic brain firing for the cognitive development. The good news for them, according to some researchers, they'll be much better at being able to adapt in an ever-changing world. A dear old friend of mine sent me this article titled If you want your kid to get a good job, let them play more, which outlines just that sentiment.
What resonated with me from the article was the very fact we've always encouraged our girls to play, and this very play can help train our children in the skills they need to survive automation now, we won’t have to worry as much about re-training them as workers later, this according to the Real Play Coalition whose partners include Arup, UNICEF, National Geographic, The LEGO Foundation and IKEA.
The automation we're talking about has already displaced workers across industries who had been employed in lower-level, repetitive-skill jobs that algorithms and machines can now do faster and more consistently over time. In the human resources and recruiting technology space I've been in for over 20 years, this same displacement is now starting to be a reality, with artificial intelligence and machine learning automating more and more sourcing job candidates, early communication and repetitive question answering on career sites (chatbots), testing and assessing.
However, this level of hiring automation is actually helping to augment and even improve the job candidate experience, what my research firm Talent Board measures, as well as the HR, recruiter and hiring manager experiences. Offering them up a greater focal strength around things that as humans we do much better: empathy, relationship building, creative problem-solving, navigating and adapting to the the sheer complexity of human interactivity we experience every minute of every day at home, work or play. And the companies that embrace the play definitely have a competitive edge.
As their parents, we also practice much of what we preach for play above. Because we know you're never too old to play and keep yourself healthy, young at heart, employable and entrepreneurial.
And dressing up for the final Star Wars movie premiere because you had never done it before most definitely counts as applicable play.
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