Today, the value of children’s play is hardly in any doubt. We know from various textbooks and writings that play promotes the development of children’s intelligence, develops their social skills, and refines their emotions and personality. “Play should become the basic activity of kindergarten education” has become the credo of early childhood educators. Because games can promote children’s development, we need to use games to promote children’s development. There is nothing wrong with this logic, but the reality makes us wary: we are paying more and more attention to play in words, but we are neglecting it in actions. Year after year, we hold various competitions and consider the ability to organize and manage teaching as the main talent of good teachers; we regard children’s free play as an activity that can be adjusted at will and time can be taken up at will; we treat children’s play area as a place for children to complete learning tasks assigned by teachers. These phenomena arise precisely because we promote play primarily on the basis of its value for children’s development, rather than on the basis of respect and understanding of children’s needs. In other words, we have instrumentalized the value of play. We value play because it is “useful”, not because it is the child’s nature, the child’s life. For children, play is not a far-reaching, valuable activity; it is simply fun. Children need it instinctively and naturally get endless pleasure and satisfaction from it. Children never think about what they can learn or develop from the games they are playing now. If you ask them to think about it, they may not be able to think about anything at all. In fact, it is absurd for children to think about it, but teachers will consider it. Teachers place special emphasis on considering whether there is an intellectual or skill outcome to children’s play. While modern psychological science has transformed many measures into data and tables, it seems that the development of children through play can only be recognized if it is at least immediately observed or demonstrated. It may seem contradictory that on the one hand we are pushing play more and more, and on the other hand children’s freedom to play is decreasing, but it happens to be mutually beneficial. The more we value play as a visible outcome for children’s development, the more we will push play toward that outcome. Thus, we see a lot of scenarios where the teacher starts the child’s play by emphasizing that you have to think about how and what to play. During the game, the teacher will eagerly teach the child: you should play this way and not that way. At the end of the child’s game, the teacher will eagerly ask: What did you learn? What should you do in the future? We remember that in our childhood, we would not welcome anyone who told us how to play; we would refuse to play with anyone who expected us to learn some knowledge and skills through playing; we would feel bored with anyone who always asked us to reflect on all the gains and losses of the process after playing. We once did a survey and asked children to draw their favorite games in their mind. Interestingly, none of the over 300 drawings collected showed teachers, but rather themselves and their partners, in addition to their parents and even pets. Perhaps this result can be interpreted in several ways, but at least it makes us fully aware: we are not doing a good job as playmates for our children. Is it that we have forgotten our childhood? Is it that we do not respect and understand our children enough? Or are we unable to get rid of the endless tension and anxiety that modern society gives us? The reasons for this are complex. As teachers, we actually have a lot of conflicts and contradictions within us. Educational problems are often not problems of education itself, but of society. Nor can we rely on teachers alone to solve these problems; children’s lack of freedom may at the same time be a reflection of teachers’ lack of freedom. Still, we must always remember: as a child, play is his heaven, his home, his field, but only not his classroom. He is a doer of nothing. The value of play is to do nothing and not to do anything.