Do You Remember Big?
Do you remember the movie Big with Tom Hanks? It's one of the movies that stands out to me from my childhood, and it's one I find myself appreciating even more now as an adult. If you haven't seen it in a while, Tom Hanks plays Josh, a twelve-year-old boy who isn't tall enough to get on a ride at the carnival, so he makes a wish on a fortune-teller machine that he could be big. The next morning he wakes up in a grown man's body, his own mother doesn't recognize him, and he ends up on his own in New York City with a job at a toy company.
This is where the part I love most begins. The toy company is full of adults in suits sitting around conference tables deciding which toys will sell, and none of them are playing with the toys. Josh, who still has the mind of a twelve-year-old, gets down on the floor and plays with everything, and his feedback is honest and spot-on enough ("I don't get it… what's fun about that?") that he quickly becomes the most valuable person in the building. Do you remember the scene where he and the owner of the company end up dancing out a song on the giant floor piano at FAO Schwarz? Two grown men in suits, laughing and playing music with their feet in the middle of a toy store, and for a moment the owner remembers what it feels like to have fun again. As the movie goes on, you watch one adult after another loosen up, laugh, and come back to life, all because someone reminded them how to play.
Hook, Elf, and the Grown-Ups Who Forgot
Once you notice this storyline, you start to see it everywhere. In Hook, Robin Williams plays Peter Banning, a busy lawyer who is always on the phone, misses his son's baseball game, and has completely forgotten that he was once Peter Pan. To rescue his children, he has to remember how to imagine, how to be silly, and how to find his happy thought, and it's only when he lets himself play again that he can fly.
In Elf, Buddy comes down from the North Pole into a city full of cranky, overworked adults, including his own father, who spends every waking hour at the office and has no time for his family. Buddy brings snowball fights, Etch A Sketch masterpieces, and his unshakeable belief in magic, and little by little the people around him start to soften. By the end of the movie, a whole crowd of New Yorkers is singing together in Central Park to keep Santa's sleigh in the air, which, as a music therapist, might be my favorite movie moment of all time.
From Mr. Banks finally flying a kite with his children at the end of Mary Poppins, to a grown-up Christopher Robin remembering how to play in the Hundred Acre Wood, to the Little Prince puzzling over why grown-ups take everything so seriously, there’s a reason this theme shows up in countless movies and books, and it’s one most of us recognize in ourselves: grown-ups forget how to play, and when they remember, they come back to life.
Are You Missing Play in Your Own Life?
Let me ask you something. When was the last time you played, not because your child asked you to or because it was on the schedule, but just for the fun of it? Are you noticing that your days are full from the minute you wake up until the minute you fall into bed, with work, school drop-offs, appointments, dinner, and the never-ending list of things that need to get done? Have you caught yourself sitting on the floor with your kids while your mind is three steps ahead, thinking about the emails you still need to answer?
If that sounds familiar, you're not alone, and there is nothing wrong with you. Most of us were never told that play is something we're allowed to keep as adults. Somewhere along the way it gets filed under "things for kids," and being a responsible grown-up starts to mean putting it aside. You're not a bad parent or a lazy employee for wanting more lightness in your life, and you're not selfish for needing it. Play isn't a luxury we earn after the work is done, and the research on how our brains work backs that up.
What Play Does for Our Brains
I've been listening to Essentialism by Greg McKeown, a book about doing less but doing what matters most, and I was surprised to find an entire chapter devoted to play. McKeown describes how many of the most creative and successful people intentionally leave room for play in their lives, and he draws on the work of Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, to explain why. Far from being a break from productive thinking, play is part of how our brains do their best thinking. When we play, we explore new possibilities, make connections we wouldn't otherwise make, lower our stress, and come back to our work and our families with more patience and more creativity.
In other words, the adults in Big weren't missing out on fun alone. When they stopped playing, they also lost the very thing that helps people solve problems, connect with each other, and see the world with fresh eyes, and Josh was the one who still had it.
Music and Art Therapy Aren't Only for Kids
This has been on my mind ever since my recent interview with WMUR’s New Hampshire Chronicle. The interviewer asked me what one thing I wanted people to know about music therapy, and my answer was that it isn't only for kids, and the same is true of art therapy. Many adults have forgotten how wonderful it feels to play, and music and art are two of the most natural ways back to it.
When an adult picks up a drum for the first time in years, improvises on a xylophone without worrying about wrong notes, or sings along to a song that takes them back to high school, something shifts, and you can see their shoulders drop and hear them laugh in a way they haven't in a long time.
Art therapy offers the same kind of opening for adults who would rather work with their hands. Have you ever noticed how your mind quiets when you're doodling in the margins of a notebook or rolling a piece of clay between your fingers? In art therapy there are no grades and no one judging whether your painting is good, and that freedom is often what helps adults loosen up enough to explore stress, anxiety, grief, or big life changes that are hard to talk about directly. Many adults haven't picked up paint or markers since elementary school, and coming back to them can feel surprisingly freeing.
In music therapy and art therapy sessions at The Sonatina Center, play becomes a way to process stress, express feelings that are hard to put into words, and reconnect with parts of ourselves that get buried under the responsibilities of adult life.
Bringing Play Back Into Your Week
You don't need a magic fortune-teller machine to remember how to play, and it doesn't have to take much time. Here are a few places to start:
Play alongside your kids instead of supervising them. Get down on the floor, build the block tower, or make up a silly song in the car, and let yourself enjoy it as much as they do.
Put music back in your day. Dance in the kitchen while you make dinner, sing loudly in the car, or pull out an instrument you haven't touched since you were a kid.
Make something without a goal. Doodle, color, play with clay, or paint something that will never hang on a wall, and notice how it feels to create without needing it to be good.
Add play to your workday. A quick game with coworkers, a walk where you let your mind wander, or a few minutes of something lighthearted between meetings can open up your thinking in surprising ways.
Schedule it. It might feel funny to put play on the calendar, but if the most creative people in the world make time for it, you can too.
If you're finding that it's hard to feel lighthearted at all, or that stress has made it difficult to enjoy the things you used to love, music therapy and art therapy can help you find your way back. Our art therapist, Kat Sturdevant, takes a trauma-informed approach and has openings for adults, and her sessions are a welcoming place to start even if you haven't made art in years or don't think of yourself as creative. Reach out to schedule a consultation and let's talk about what support could look like for you.
Next time you’re planning a family movie night, pull up Big, Hook, or Elf for a family movie night, and see if you can find your own giant piano moment.