Opinion: Play has serious value for kids, and adults too

My favorite game as a kid was hide-and-seek. We set the simple rules ahead of time — an agreed-upon home base, boundaries, how to decide who was “it”— but we also constantly adapted the rules as others joined, or parents shooed us off to another place. Childhood play taught us how to be fair, how to cooperate, and how to work together towards the common goal: playing as long as possible.