‘It’s one of your main things in life like’: Play as Conceptualised by Children

Play is widely recognised as important in children’s lives. However, play is inconsistently defined and often defies our full understanding. Further, the role of children in helping to define and understand play is often under-appreciated and under-utilised in research on play. To improve our understanding of play in childhood, we systematically investigated children’s understanding of play through focus groups with 68 children (aged 4-13 years). During 46 focus group sessions, a range of creative and participatory based methods were used to elicit children’s perspectives on play. Using reflexive thematic analysis, themes were identified and three core concepts of play were identified across these themes. These concepts were: (1) the importance of a degree of agency, (2) meaningful (often social) connection, and (3) challenge and complexity, with a clear expectation for play to be fun. These concepts closely align with prominent play theories, and reaffirm characteristics of play that have been identified and highlighted in the wider literature. Implications for future research, policy and practice are outlined, including the need to use our understanding of what play is for children to create authentic play experiences for research and practice purposes.