split can do it's work using a regex so you can try a regex with group of chars to do the job. Consider this example (but notice a first empy element!):

#win quotation
perl -e "print join '|',split /[{}\s]+/,$ARGV[0]" "{31 0} {26 0} {6 10
+} {17 0}"
|31|0|26|0|6|10|17|0
[download]

Or a global silly substitution like:

perl -e "print map{s/\s?{/I am /g;s/(\d{1,3})\s/$1 years old and /g;s/
+(\d{1,3})}/$1 months old.\n/g;qq($_\n)}@ARGV" 
        "{31 0} {26 0} {6 10} {17 0}"

I am 31 years old and 0 months old.
I am 26 years old and 0 months old.
I am 6 years old and 10 months old.
I am 17 years old and 0 months old.
[download]

But it really depends on your needs and skill, what have you tried so far?

L*