![]() ![]() Expose your infant to a variety of toys and rotate them so baby doesn’t get bored.Here are some great ideas on how to encourage symbolic play at the three stages we discussed above: Early days (about 3 to 18 months old) Now you’re convinced and ready to nudge your child towards symbolic play. Watch your kids at play and you’ll most likely hear both sets of skills being practiced: “Who spilled out all the beads? Now I have to pick them up!” mingles with “Last one to the end of the yard is a rotten egg!” As your child plays, they develop fine and gross motor skills. Play is a great way to build up their vocabulary. This is the first step in language acquisition. Your child needs a developed memory to understand that an object can stand for something other than itself. Goal achieved? That’s a great boost to developing self-esteem. Your child needs to come up with a plan and a way to carry it out. Symbolic play exercises cognitive skills, as we mentioned. Symbolic play teaches a child to see the “other.” Since some kids may think differently than them, your child learns how to cooperate and negotiate. As they play, they act out experiences that they’ve encountered and hardwire into their brains how to deal with them. This skill will help them with problem solving as they grow older. When your child exercises their imagination, they create new neural pathways and learn how to think creatively. Here’s a list of five areas that are strengthened when your child engages in symbolic play: Researchers note that a child who follows a sequence when playing (stirring milk and then feeding the doll) will also be able to manage syntax in language (“I need paper and crayons”). When children are engaged in symbolic play, they’re practicing this very concept. When we write letters and numbers, we’re using symbols for what we want to convey. Symbolic play is a stepping stone to literacy and numeracy. Symbolic play is the way children overcome their impulsiveness and develop the thought-out behaviors that will help them with more complicated cognitive functions.īut there’s more. For Vygotsky, who published his theories in the early 20th century, playing make-believe is essential to a child’s healthy development. Just how important is symbolic play? Very, according to Russian psychiatrist Lev Vygotsky. Now it’s time to put the baby to sleep.” You may find your child talking to themselves and sticking a spoon into their dolly’s mouth: “You don’t need to be afraid. Notice how their play becomes a mini-drama: “Let’s play Mommy and Daddy. Your child is able to plan with their friends what they’ll play. And their symbolic play evolves as they work with some sort of plan, assign roles, and act out sequenced steps. Hurray! Preschooler pretending (3 to 5 years old)Īt this age, children start playing side-by-side and noticing what others kids do. These are the first, simple steps of symbolic play. Your child may feed their teddy bear using their play dishes. You may be lucky enough to catch them speaking to themselves or calling you at work. That’s because they can now imagine an object and don’t need to have the concrete object in front of them.Ī wooden block or empty paper roll can become a cell phone. Your child will start to use one object to represent a different object. Then things will start to get more interesting. You’ll see them piling people into their passenger train, brushing their dolly’s hair with your hairbrush, and drinking water from their play tea set. You can watch for the precursors of real symbolic play: At first your child will follow the rules and play with their toys in conventional ways. ![]() Give them a couple of months more, and they’ll start pushing their toy truck back and forth to the sound effects of “vroom, vroom.” Toddler at play (18 months to 3 years old)Īt this stage, your child will play alone or side-by-side with other children their age. So when your little one bangs their rattle on the floor, grin and bear it, because this is the start of symbolic play. At around 8 months old, they graduate to using their toys to make a racket. Yup, from about 3 months old they’ve been putting their fingers and toys into their mouths to figure them out. A little later, they learn more through exploring their little world. Early days (about 3 to 18 months old)įrom the magical moment of birth, your child has been building up their knowledge of the world by observing objects and actions. We can divide the stages of symbolic play into roughly three stages. Examples of symbolic play at different ages ![]()
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