The Benefits of Pretend Play
Play is one of the main occupations of children today (American Occupational Therapy Association, 2020)! As occupational therapists, play is very well within our scope of practice to work on with your kiddo! There are many factors that go into how a child plays, including personal and physical factors, which can be influenced by a child’s sensory processing. According to Schoen (2018), sensory processing refers to the process and organization of sensations from our sensory systems for use throughout our daily occupations. Schoen (2018) states that Jane Ayres, the founder of sensory integration theory, also believed that “play consists of the adaptive responses which make sensory integration happen”, and sensory integration theory describes the play as the route for interventions. A study done by Bundy et al. (2007), had found that children with sensory processing disorder were just as playful as typical developing children. It may look different, but ALL kids want to play!
Play can be defined as activities that have internal motivation, freedom from external rules, can transcend reality as well as reflect reality, focus on means rather than ends, are spontaneous and safe, and require the active participation of the player (Watts et al, 2014). In shorter terms, play benefits the development of so many skills! Listed below are a couple of examples of pretend play and how you can play with your child to support their development of play-based skills.
Pretend Play
Pretend play or imaginative play, is a form of play where children engage in make-believe scenarios (Beck, 2023). This may look like your child pretending to be a part of a scene or a world, or pretending to be a different person. They use their imagination to create and act out stories, situations, and interactions. It can involve small toys, props, costumes, and transforming ordinary objects around the house into a more symbolic representation.
Pretend play includes two different types of play:
Structured Play: This refers to a goal-oriented activity, including; board games, outdoor games like tag, organized sports, or an activity that requires the players to follow directions or complete an activity.
Unstructured Play: This refers to children having the freedom to explore, create, and discover without any predetermined guidelines or rules and is a much more open-ended play scenario. This can look like playing with toys in a non-traditional way that they are not intended to be used.
Benefits of Pretend Play
This type of play is super important in supporting child development in different domains. Including how they participate physically, cognitively, sensory, and even in developing executive functioning skills! Here are several more ways that pretend play can benefit children;
Cognitive: When children engage in pretend or imaginative play, they create and manipulate imaginary scenarios that can improve their problem-solving abilities, critical thinking skills, and creativity. They can learn how to be flexible, plan, and organize different ideas that they have.
Language Development: Pretend play can provide a lot of opportunities for children to develop their language skills in a fun way! Children have to communicate with their playmates and negotiate roles and scenarios with each other. The process of imaginary play can promote vocabulary expansion, conversational skills, sentence structure, and receptive language! Children learn how to express their emotions, ideas, and thoughts effectively through pretend play.
Social and Emotional Development: Social and emotional learning can take place through pretend play as children expand upon their emotional competence and social-emotional learning. Children learn how to understand perspectives other than their own, take on different roles, and empathize with other playmates. As far as social skills, children learn how to take turns and collaborate with each other in a positive way. Imaginary play allows children to develop their own self-regulation skills and experiment with different behaviors as well.
Self-Care Skills: Pretend play is a great opportunity for children to practice their self-care skills! Children can practice putting on and taking off clothing in dress-up clothing, learning how to manipulate zippers, buttons, and snaps.
Fine & Gross Motor Skill Development: Imaginary play can help a child explore different motor areas including both fine and gross motor. Fine motor skills can look like grasping, strength, object manipulation, and tool use. When pretending to be a certain person or character, they build upon the skills of precision, fine motor, coordination, and spatial awareness. Gross motor looks like balance, coordination, manipulating objects, and overall movement!
Self-Confidence: A positive and stress-free play environment can provide a space for a child to gain more self-confidence in how their body moves through space and other areas like object manipulation or language development. Pretend play is a huge tool for younger children to practice these skills through play.
Imagination & Creativity: Pretend play is great for fostering imagination and creativity. Imaginative thinking, such as transforming regular objects into props and creating storylines, can help children develop new ideas and approach problems from a creative angle.
Planning and Organization: Children will learn how to plan and organize their play scenarios while in pretend play. They will communicate with other playmates, create roles and storylines as well as gather props to utilize. Thinking ahead, setting goals, and creating a structure to play are thinking strategies that we utilize every day as adults!
Problem-Solving: Pretend play with storylines will usually have obstacles or challenges that require children to overcome. They will utilize their problem-solving skills to figure out solutions to overcome these challenges. These challenges could look like a rescue mission or a pretend conflict with other characters where children will expand on their critical thinking abilities to come up with a creative solution to problem-solve.
Pretend Play Ideas
There are so many different ways to support the benefits of pretend play, and it is a meaningful way to play with your child(ren)! Imaginative play could include:
Playing house with a kitchen set
Pretend shopping with a shopping cart toy
Pretending to be a vet with stuffed animals
Play restaurant with a pretend pizza shop
Pretending to be a nurse or a doctor with a medical kit
Items to include to support pretend play can include:
Open-ended toys such as Legos, magnatiles, or playdoh!
Play kitchens or workbenches
Writing or drawing materials
Play tents or forts
References
Beck, C. (2023, June 19). Dramatic play benefits. The OT Toolbox. https://www.theottoolbox.com/small-world-and-dramatic-play-activities/
Bundy, A. C., Shia, S., Qi, L., & Miller, L. J. (2007). How does sensory processing dysfunction affect play? The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 61(2), 201–208. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.61.2.201
Occupational therapy practice framework: Domain and process—Fourth edition. (2020). The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 74(Supplement_2). https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2020.74s2001
Schoen, S. A., Lane, S. J., Mailloux, Z., May‐Benson, T., Parham, L. D., Smith Roley, S., & Schaaf, R. C. (2018). A systematic review of Ayres sensory integration intervention for children with autism. Autism Research, 12(1), 6–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2046
Watts, T., Stagnitti, K., & Brown, T. (2014). Relationship between play and sensory processing: A systematic review. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 68(2). https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2014.009787