In An Era of Distractions, Let's Encourage Pretend Play

In my last blog entry Learning to Play? (er... a month ago. How did that happen?) I discussed a child development observation that has been making headlines lately: today's children don't play the way their parents did. The end result of today's play culture may be children who miss out on important developmental skills, including learning how to self-regulate in both the cognitive and social-emotional sense. In a nutshell, the observations by child specialists are that today's children:

1. Play almost exclusively with children their age and don't have older child "play mentors."
2. Are heavily involved in adult-led activities and are unable to practice unstructured make-believe play with other children.
3. Watch more t.v., play more video games and spend less time outside and are becoming passive both in mind and body.

So, what can we, as parents, do to change the social scaffolding that are children's lives have become attached to? The good news is that there is much we can do--whether your child is a 1 year old or 10 year old.

First of all, let's look at our own choices as parents. Putting our kids into activities like karate or gymnastics or math clubs aren't bad things to do. They are enrichment activities which are fun for kids and keep them active. What we as parents need to understand, however, is that unstructured pretend play is not "doing nothing." And it is just--if not more--important than playing both baseball and soccer. Make-believe play encourages higher symbolic thinking and the development of self-regulation (i.e. planning skills and impulse control). These cognitive and social-emotional skills are learned while children act out ideas and stories while using different props. (As an aside, this is another reason why reading to your children is so important. Having a library of stories in their heads to draw upon gives them a jumping off point for play activities and allows them to make up alternate versions of the story lines.) We need to choose to give our children the time and space to learn and exercise these skills.

So, what can we do? The following short articles written in 2008 by D.J. Leong and E. Bodrova--originators in the Tools of the Mind program--offer suggestions that parents can use to encourage mature play at home and in playgroups.

The first article, Make Believe Play at Home, breaks down the needs of children by age, noting that whereas children who are between the ages of 3-5 generally need help thinking up ideas of what to pretend, children who are between the ages of 1-3 don't know how to pretend play if no one shows them! They list simple ideas in bullet point form to help you understand what your role should be--and should not be--when encouraging make-believe play.

The second article, Mature Play Skills in Playgroups, encourages parents to invite over children of different ages, gives ideas for kick-starting the group and dealing with a very active group of children that will still encourage self-regulation.

I hope these articles are helpful! And please leave comments with any of your thoughts and suggestions on how to encourage our children to play creatively!