A father at one of our community parenting programmes once told me something I have never forgotten.

He said, "Before this, I didn't know how to show love to my child."

Not because he didn't love his child. Of course he did. But he had grown up in a world where adults, especially men, didn't sit on the floor and play with children. Nobody had shown him that love could look like telling stories together, building towers from empty boxes, making up silly games, or simply entering a child's world for a few uninterrupted minutes.

What changed wasn't that he learned a new activity. He discovered a new way of connecting. Play became his way of saying, "I love you." 

It became his way of listening, of being present, and of building a relationship with his child.

I've thought about that father a lot over the past few days as we've celebrated the International Day of Play. Every year, the day prompts the same question for me: why does play need its own international day?

On the face of it, the question seems absurd. Children don't need to be taught how to play or why it's important. They are born knowing this. Give a child a stick, a cardboard box, a patch of sand or a friend, and they will quickly remind you that imagination is one of humanity's greatest resources. Play is instinctive. It's universal. It predates formal education, policy frameworks and learning standards by centuries.

The people who need convincing are not children. It's us. It's the adults, the systems, the policies, the funding decisions and, sometimes, the deeply held belief that learning only counts when it looks serious and can be measured with standardised tools that tell us how well a child can read, write or do maths. A child sitting at a desk with their books is recognised as learning. A child building, pretending, exploring, negotiating and imagining is often seen as "just playing".

And yet everything we know about child development tells us otherwise. Over the last week, I've had the privilege of moderating a global conversation on play with education leaders from around the world, speaking at a community event here in Botswana, and reflecting on findings from an independent case study of Learn To Play's work in several communities. 

Across all of these conversations, one idea kept resurfacing: Play is not a break from learning. Play is what learning looks like.

But perhaps more importantly, play is not simply a tool for learning. It is one of the ways children experience connection, belonging, confidence, joy and love. Long before a child learns to read, they learn whether the world is safe. Long before they learn mathematics, they learn whether they matter. Long before they learn to write, they learn whether there is somebody who delights in them.

That is why play matters.

One of the stories that has stayed with me comes from Dukwi refugee camp where we work. Children arrive there speaking different languages, carrying different experiences and coming from different parts of the world. Yet within days, children who cannot speak the same language begin playing together. They begin singing together. They begin laughing together.

As I watched them, I realised that play was doing something much bigger than helping children learn.

Play was helping children belong.

In a world that often feels increasingly divided, play becomes a language of its own. A language of curiosity, friendship and connection that exists long before children share a common vocabulary. For children who have experienced uncertainty, displacement or disruption, that sense of belonging is incredibly powerful.

Another story comes from one of the women leading a community playgroup. When asked what her role meant to her, she replied simply: