Pretend Play Develops Children's Social Skills
How Dress Up Activities Foster Healthy Relationships
Jul 28, 2009
At age four, children can think about complex situations, objects and people without seeing them, which enriches their ability to create dramatic play ideas using props and borrowed ideas from stories, movies and life experiences. Kids ages four and up will spend hours making up elaborate make believe adventures and conflicts. Adults label this behavior “play” and consider play to be just for fun.
But pretend play isn’t just for play. This brain advancement at age four is a step forward in a child’s development and serves several purposes for a child to acquire a higher level of social skills. Dress up and dramatic play has a higher purpose that affects a child’s social and relationship health for life.
How Pretend Play Increases Perspective Taking
Perspective taking is the ability to see things from another person’s point of view. The roots of perspective taking begin at age two and it’s possible to observe two year old children expressing concern when someone else is hurt. But the brain development that occurs at age four allows for a huge advancement in seeing the world through another person’s perspective. The ability to see another’s point of view is a social skill that is crucial in forming healthy relationships.
“One of the main ways children differ – which strongly affects their peer relationships – is in their perspective taking skills,” write Riley, San Juan, Klinkner and Ramminger authors of Social & Emotional Development: Connecting Science and Practice in Early Childhood Settings [Redleaf Press, 2008]. The authors go on to write that “When children have this perspective taking ability, they are much more likely to behavior prosocially.” The ability to form healthy relationships seems to rely heavily on the ability to see another’s point of view. Playing dress up and pretending to be another character provides excellent practice for children to look at the world through another’s eyes.
How Pretend Play Puts Social Skills Into Practice
When children engage in dramatic play and make believe situations, they seem to invent conflicts that need solving. Even a child playing alone with two action figures usually decides that the two characters are fighting or arguing over power, property or cause. When other children aren’t available, some children use stuffed animals as other characters. A teddy bear tea party usually includes a bear that forgets to use his manners.
As children solve conflicts in their pretend world, they are developing perspective and social skills that they will use in real life situations. Young children are copycats and will often solve conflicts in ways that they’ve seen others use, in their homes, schools and in the media they watch.
Copying the conflict resolution skills of others is one reason that it’s crucial for adults to model respectful problem solving skills for children. This isn’t to say that adults should be concerned at some level of hero fighting and shouting that goes on during pretend play. It’s of some importance for children to try on the role of characters who handle conflict in disrespectful ways.
Make believe play offers children the opportunity to solve problems in different ways and observe various outcomes and different emotional responses inside themselves and others. Solving conflicts in a pretend world is like practicing for a play performance. Children rehearse in different ways to plan for real life scenarios.
Tips to Promote Pretend Play
Adults can do simple things at home and in the classroom to encourage healthy make believe and dramatic play:
- Limit the amount of television and video time for children
- Provide a box of dress up clothes full of old shoes, capes (ones with Velcro closings are best), hats, aprons, purses, bags and vests
- When choosing day care and schools for children ages four, five and six, make sure that the school provides a home living center or dramatic play area of dress up box on a daily basis
- Hang a mirror at a child’s level near the area where children most often engage in pretend play.
- Allow for a healthy amount of conflict and disrespectful conflict resolution in the context of make believe play (monsters who eat people, trolls who kidnap others, heroes who threaten to destroy the planet)
Play full of pretend drama created by children helps prepare children for real life by developing important social skills that will affect the health of their relationships throughout life. Parents and child care providers can help children develop social and emotional skills by providing plenty of opportunities for play with dress up items and character props.
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