Play is political.

One of my favorite social media account personalities to follow is The OccuPLAYtional Therapist.

The words below are not mine. They belong to Kelsie.

But they are worth sharing here. Please consider taking a moment to follow them.

Let me make something clear:

Everything I do, everything I write, everything I stand for here is inherently political.

Play is inherently political. If I say “we need to let children play freely” then I’m also saying “parents need to be making enough money at their jobs to be able to come home and hang out with their kids for unstructured hours in the evening so the kids aren’t being shuffled from care service to care service.” I’m also saying, “teachers need to be paid enough and trusted enough to be capable of breathing without over-standardizing everything the children do.” I’m also saying “we need to listen to scientific evidence telling us how important play is” and that means I’m also saying “we need funds for the sciences” and that means I’m also saying “evidence is knowable and a thing worth leaning on”; and I’m *also* saying “we need to pay attention to the people who are being left out of the studies and see how we can bring in their lived experience” and that means that I’m saying “Black and brown people and women and queer people and, ironically, disabled people and also inconvenient people of all kinds sometimes get left out of the literature and we need to find ways to bridge that gap” and that means that I’m yet again saying “fund the sciences”.

If I’m saying “let children play freely” then I’m saying “let neurodivergent children play the ‘wrong’ way, too,” because I’m saying “there’s not a wrong way to play”; and that implies that I’m saying “we need safe spaces for neurodivergent children to be allowed to be neurodivergent children” and that means “we also need to allow neurodivergent people to be neurodivergent people” and that means an entire cascade of things about our current society and political system, the absolute bare minimum of which is that people deserve human rights and that those should be protected.

Sensory processing is inherently political. When I say “here is how to listen to your body and perhaps hear what it is telling you and nobody can tell you that you are wrong,” I am also saying, “you have to respect somebody else’s report of what their body told them they needed.” I am also saying “somebody else may need a different thing out of a public space than you.” I am also saying “our collective taxes fund the things we all need.” When I say “some people are sensory-seeking” then I’m also saying “children need spaces to get loud, move their bodies, and touch and explore things in public” and that means “everywhere can’t be an absolutely completely sanitized space where noise, movement, or touch are policed”.

Respecting children is inherently political. When I say “children deserve respect as full human beings” then I am also saying “trans children deserve respect as full human beings and it is wrong to police the lived experience of human beings,” and I am also saying “Palestinian children deserve respect as full human beings and it is wrong to murder human beings,” and I am also saying “Autistic children deserve respect as full human beings and it is wrong to police the bodily existence of human beings,” and so, so much more.

Neurodiversity-affirming practice is inherently political. When I say “being autistic is a type of brain wiring and autistic people deserve full acceptance as they are,” I am also saying “being disabled is not a barrier to being accepted as a human being.” I am also saying, “society owes it to disabled people to make space for them to thrive.” I am also saying, “diversity, divergence, and disability are a natural part of the human condition.” I am also saying, “access to healthcare — mental healthcare included — should be a human right.”

Knowing about child development is inherently political. When I say “a two-year-old is not ‘being bad’ for feeling an emotion” then I am also saying theoretical things like “I call into question the entire system of morality that suggests that people are ‘being bad’ for feeling emotions, ever” and also practical things like “stop kicking small children out of daycare or school for struggling.” I’m saying “a child is not an adult and can’t be responsible for adult crimes.” I’m saying “we need community services that are trained in child development and there to support parents.”

Learning to self-regulate is inherently political. When I say “humans are inherently social creatures who co-regulate as a primary tool to learn how to cope with overwhelming emotion” I’m also saying “this includes men.” I’m also saying “people need support from one another that isn’t exclusively romantic support and love.” I’m once again saying “we need comprehensive mental health care.” When I say “kids do well when they can” I’m also saying “adults do well when they can.” I’m saying “everyone wants the same basic things, just some of us have skills to get those in ways that work better than others.” I am also saying “punitive justice systems don’t do anything to restore what’s been lost or help solve the underlying cause, they just satiate a desire for vengeance.”

And no matter what the heck I write on this page, any words I ever write at all, I’m saying, “I don’t believe these thoughts should only be accessible to you if you have US health insurance.” I’m saying, “I want to try to make your life easier in some way by sharing this thing I know with you.” I’m saying, “You don’t only deserve this if you pay for it.”

In this society, you are worth what money someone can make off of you. Off of your contact information, off of your body, of even where your eyes rest. I am saying, "This has nothing to do with money. This is love."

I’m saying, “Take care of yourself.” I’m saying, “Take care of your child.” I’m saying, “I want to take care of you as best as I can.” I’m saying, “We all have to take care of each other.”

That’s a political statement. It’s always been a political statement. This page has always been political and will always be. My writing has always been political and will always be.

We all have to take care of each other.