"Yes, much play does not flow automatically into acceptances to good colleges or unlimited career choices. But ongoing play through the teenage years accounts for an ongoing spirit of playfulness."  Terr believes that playfulness is a sign of emotional strength. "The psychologists and psychoanalysts of developmental staging may have been correct in their observation that teenagers tend to stop playing, but by now we can recognize that they were probably wrong in attributing this stoppage to an adolescent's increasing thoughtfulness and maturity. In my view, it takes emotional maturity for a young person to withstand outside pressures to stop playing, and it takes fortitude to make the time for play. At crucial points in life -- adolescence, for one, but also after tragedy, illness, retirement, and grave disappointment -- it is tempting to quit." And at any age, she says, "if a person stops playing, there will be an unfortunate change."

When I was a child one of my greatest joys was to walk to a clearing in the woods behind my house, alone or with a friend. We'd sit and talk for hours on Lemonade Rock, a striated stone formation so wide several people could sit on it, and so high you could look down on a broad, sparkling stretch of the Hudson River. It was a sacred space, full of wonder and possibility, a place of both intensity and freedom. Today as I sit and talk with people in my consulting-room, I am often reminded of Lemonade Rock. And so my work -- our work together -- is a kind of play. And almost always, one of the fruits of a successful therapy is a recovery or enhancement of joy and playfulness.