Pretend Play and its Real Benefits

You see it all the time. It makes you truly wonder; it also makes you remember. You can’t stop it, even when supper is ready. It wants your child. Playtime: it just seems so unproductive. Your kid wants to be out there engaging in “pretend play,” and although you’d rather have them preparing and focusing all their strength on school (this sounds like a ticket straight to college), pretend play has some pretty great benefits for achieving healthy development. Now, I know this might sound crazy when you’re watching your little guy run around with his equally imaginative friends exploding aliens with invisible grenades, but bare with me.

Pretend play is an important part of childhood. You may see it begin around the toddler stage. Children learn about their friends, their family, and the world around them when they pretend play. When their imaginations take over, they’re learning social skills, vocabulary skills, problem solving skills, and even disciplinary skills, all timed perfectly in their early development (Hodgson 1).

When children are playing together, they practice sharing, turn-taking, and negotiating. They’re building a foundation for social-emotional skills. They’re acting out certain experiences, pretending to endure them, and this can guide them in control of authentic emotion. And as they play around with consideration of how their peers act, think and feel, they’re scooping a place in their heart for empathy.

Children have a myriad of experiences to share with each other, all new and exciting. When they engage with each other, they’re learning language and vocabulary skills. When they communicate with each other, especially when they tell each other stories, they must develop a logical plot with a sequence of events. Fact is, they’re learning.

During pretend play, children often come up with their own problems to solve. It’s like their miniature model of the world. If a problem arises (or is created) during their journey, they must think as a team of ways to overcome said problem to successfully reach their final goal. It engages their imagination, and gives them a smaller feel for problem-solving skills. Early introduction to problem-solving skills, as you might easily believe, is crucial in its stronger development later on in life.

Children will often practice with rules when they play. And when someone breaks a rule, another is bound to put his/her foot down. This is discipline in their small, imaginative world, and it can prepare them to understand and learn from discipline later on in life.

So how can you encourage pretend play if your child isn’t displaying it? Well, for starters, make time for it. Try not to overload your child’s plate with extra-curricular activity; leave them time for unstructured play. Creativity takes time to develop, and children can have difficulty entertaining themselves if they aren’t given enough free time to use these imaginations (Hodgson 1).

• Show them that play is valuable by playing with them. They’ll realize it’s important if they see their parent or caregiver paying attention to them while they’re playing. I mean why not, I’m giving you an excuse to be a kid again. Take it! It’s one of the best parts of having kids. Don’t miss out on it.
• Appreciate the skills, no matter how minuscule, that they display during pretend play. If you see them solve a problem in some crafty, totally unrealistic way, praise them for it. This can really up your child’s interest in pretend play.
•  Give your child a place to play. Fill it with props, things to explore and play with.
• You should monitor your child’s playtime. Not only to keep them safe, but to offer them ideas when they seem stuck. If they’re getting bored, be their muse. Offer new props, new character roles, or new places to “explore”.
• Children get their ideas for pretend play from life itself. Usually, what interests them the most finds its way to the plot in your child’s epic unwritten novel. Find out what they’re interest is and go with it. Read them books on it. This will give them plenty of ideas for pretend play!