Not only is play associated with childhood happiness, it’s essential to your child’s development. When you play with your child, it can have great benefits. When parents or caregivers share in and encourage children’s play it validates their own thoughts and imaginings, and it gives you an understanding of so much that’s going on in their hearts and minds.
We all know it’s fun to play. But imaginative play also encourages intellectual development and in three major ways:
- Symbolic thinking is essential to reading and math. How can written or printed squiggles — letters and digits— mean anything to a child who hasn’t learned that one thing can stand for something else, can be a symbol for something else? When a child uses a box for a house or a block of wood in place of a telephone, she has invested a symbol with meaning. Just that simply, symbolic functioning starts with play, and the first steps in learning to read and write happen all by themselves.
- Social skills. Remember when you played house and taught your pretend “children” to take turns? Remember how you comforted a sick child or instructed (perhaps punished) a “naughty” child? These games help children internalize social rituals and emotional awareness. Whether children play these things out in their minds when alone or in the company of other children, still they gain confidence in their thoughts. They come to an understanding of our complex world of rules, customs and emotions.
- Learning skills. Studies repeatedly indicate that children who play imaginatively pick up facts and knowledge faster than children who don’t. Through a desire to play dinosaur, Jennifer learns the dinosaurs’ names. When he plays “going on a trip,” Kyle learns about far-away places and the vocabulary of cars, traffic and travel.
So, what can parents do to foster play in a world full of activities and little time? Mainly, show real respect for their thoughts. Children know when you’re genuinely interested in their pretend games and they love it. There’s almost nothing more fun and constructive than entering your child’s imagined world and seeing through those young and naive eyes.
Turn Off the Television
It doesn’t have to be on all the time. Leave certain fixed times of day for favorite shows. The rest of the time can be fun with a little imagination. Talk about subjects that used to interest you when you were your child’s age. Bring out special objects or old household things to play with. You’ll be surprised how quickly your child’s own ideas will take over. Some kids may be private about their play at first, unsure you’ll approve. But if you embrace their ideas, and even tactfully add elements they like suggesting, for instance, “Was it a rainy day on the day of the camping trip?” they might be entranced and include you.
Set up a pretend corner or create a make believe box in which to collect props. Old costumes from Halloween, empty boxes for beds, cars and buildings, old clothes and shoes, a phone that you might have discarded, dishes, safe tools, plush toys and animals — almost anything works.Mary Cox Golden, Ph.D., is a retired child psychologist who volunteers at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk.