For the world’s children, play is serious business. And failure is part of the fun.

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Ramon Espinosa/AP/File
SKIP, SKIP, HOORAY: A girl jump-ropes at a school housing residents displaced by gang violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Remember your first pillow fort – a kingdom of couch cushions with wobbly walls and a roof that collapsed again and again? I do. And I remember the joy of trying, the thrill of failing until I triumphed.

As National Children’s Day (June 8 in the United States) approached, I spoke with Robin Meisner, senior director of exhibits and research at Boston Children’s Museum, to better understand why children play. “Play isn’t just about having fun,” she says. “It’s also about learning to cope, understand differences, solve problems, and think flexibly.”

Play isn’t always joyful. It’s messy, frustrating, full of small failures. That’s the point. “If it doesn’t work, you just keep trying,” Dr. Meisner says. “That’s determination.”

Why We Wrote This

Too often, play is pushed aside – squeezed out by screen time and schoolwork. As National Children’s Day approaches in the United States, we examine how children test boundaries, swap roles, invent rules, and learn empathy through play.

Play is a rehearsal for the real world. In play, children test boundaries, swap roles, invent rules, and learn empathy. They explore what it means to belong, to lose, and to keep at it.

Yet too often, play is pushed aside – squeezed out by screen time and schoolwork. And most adults have forgotten its value. Only 30% of adults know that the United Nations recognizes play as a basic right, according to the Lego Foundation.

With every cardboard-box-turned-rocket-ship and every stick-turned-fishing-pole, children are not escaping the world. They’re preparing to meet it.

Orhan Qereman/Reuters
BUBBLY PERSONALITY: A girl blows soap bubbles as Yazidis gather to celebrate the Yazidi New Year in Amuda, Syria.
Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor
PLAY BALLS! Children enjoy playing in a tub of plastic balls as part of a program supported by UNICEF and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation in Izium, Ukraine.
Hadi Mizban/AP
JUMPING FOR JOY: Children use a trampoline during Eid al-Fitr celebrations marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Baghdad.
Matias Basualdo/AP
COURT OF MANY COLORS: Shadows of children are cast on the court at a public park during a sports workshop in Santiago, Chile.
Kylie Cooper/Reuters
HIGH JINKS: Children enjoy a ride in Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York.

For more visual storytelling that captures communities, traditions, and cultures around the globe, visit The World in Pictures.

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