I like to think of play as relationship-centred. The choices are whether that’s a relationship to the self, the parents and family, to a principle or process (for some it’s to religious themes, thinking of Easter-egg hunts right now) or to something else, which can clearly be a product. All those choices are what children, parents, carers, teachers, etc. make in order to, hopefully, guide a child’s development.

I am, though, still quite uneasy about only seeing play in developmental terms, because I am quite sure that play is an end in and of itself. In that respect I’d invoke the ambiguity of Sutton-Smith once more, along with several others – Huizinga (less so), Caillois, Csziksentmihalyi. Merleu-Ponty, Lakoff and Johnson, Kane, Pesce and more - who all come back to the issue that, as much as we want to, we still really don’t really know why we play.

I like it that way, personally. I think play, like love, is one of those things we know when we see or experience it, but have a real problem trying to pin it down in terms of a point-by-point explanation. It means it’s endlessly fascinating.