Even if your brain has already lived through the phase of the great synaptic pruning (meaning that you’re an adult), do not neglect playtime. As children play, they learn something new about life, while the adults… well, see for yourselves.

Our new yellow armchair came in a huge cardboard box. Next thing I knew, the kids were pushing the empty box through the door to their room. First, they debated half the day as to what they should do with it. They drew their ideas on paper and argued. Then they grabbed the paints, some crepe paper, glue and scissors. And all of a sudden, we had become the owners of a small space station; on board, our offspring were preparing the conquest of Mars. Then the box was a horse stable. And then a rather squarish Death Star, right after the premiere of the final Star Wars film. After a number of conversions, the box finally gave in when one of the walls rotted through. The children protested a bit, but they finally allowed me to throw the remains in the rubbish. None of the other toys bought in abundance by their grandparents, friends or by ourselves had been able to preoccupy them for so long and so effectively.

A million ideas a minute

I observed my children with growing fascination and a somewhat sentimental feeling. Where did the times go when I was able to express such interest in an ordinary box? And then magically create an entire new world with it? “There was a time that we, too, were able to build anything we wanted with two blankets in the yard, from a teepee to a princess castle,” says Joanna Kwaśniewska to cheer me up; she is a psychologist from SWPS University in Warsaw who specializes in creativity. She reminds me that children’s brains are different to adult brains. As Sarah-Jayne Blakemore writes in her book, Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain, “Indeed, the brains of animals, or young