Come Play!
Encouraging Development by
Playing with Your Child

by Lindsay Dunckel, First Five Nevada County

Published in the Family Post Spring 2006

April 29th brings two events for children to Nevada County: one for those in the eastern part and one for those in the western part. Day of the Young Child will take place from 10 to 3 on the Sierra College Campus in Grass Valley; Kids’ Day will take place from 10 to 1 at the North Tahoe Conference Center in Kings Beach. Both festivals will have booths with resources for parents and activities for kids. Both festivals are FREE! So come play!

Play is children’s work, as Maria Montessori said. Child development is driven by play—children explore and pretend their way into knowledge. The more a child uses his body and his mind during play, the more he learns. And when a child plays with a parent, the learning is extended even farther—so play with your child today.

Here’s what play isn’t: it isn’t watching TV, watching videos, playing computer or video games, using LeapFrog products, or anything else that involves something directing the child in what to see, do, or say. Then what is play? Play involves the child doing, not receiving. Play means using hands, body, and/or brains actively and it comes in all different forms. Play can be loud—children pretending to be lions—or play can be quiet—a child using cookie cutters to make shapes out of playdough. Play can be in groups—a game of tag—or play can be alone—playing with a doll house. One of the most important ways you can nurture your child’s development is to make sure she has plenty of time for play, including some time each day to play with you. There are no rules when it comes to play, except to have fun. So dive in, follow your child’s lead, and enjoy being your child’s favorite toy.

If children are learning through play, it is up to adults to provide many different experiences and opportunities to encourage this learning. Through play, children learn about feelings; objects and how the physical world works; concepts like numbers, time and memory; social roles; language skills; relationships; self-control; pre-literacy concepts like how one thing can stand for another; and they learn about planning and working to achieve a goal. Young children build almost all their knowledge about the world through play—and it is this knowledge on which their later school learning will be based. Thinking about this really brings home the importance of play.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PLAY

The development of play begins in infancy: first infants look, then learn to grab, then develop simple actions they perform on every object: mouthing, shaking, banging. Sometimes one action is a favorite, sometimes a child will rotate through all of them until something “works.” Later, we see actions that correspond to the toy: the maraca gets shaken, the teething toy gets mouthed, the hammer gets banged. Beginning at about nine months, imitation is a key component of the development of play, as your baby imitates you and others in acting on objects.

Between one and a half and two years, we see the emergence of symbolic play, where an object is used to stand for something else—a banana becomes a phone, a shoe box becomes a bed for a doll. This is the beginning of pretend play, which quickly comes to dominate the play of preschoolers. The imitating of the world around them that children do in pretend play forms the basis of their knowledge of how things work.

While playing with objects is one kind of play, the other important part of play is playing with people. This learning to engage with others also begins in infancy: young babies start to have “proto conversations” with their parents and caregivers in which they coo, the adult responds, and they coo again, in a joyful cycle that is teaching the baby about social turn-taking and is essential for later conversation. Imitation begins to have an important role in play with people in the second half of the first year, just as it does in playing with objects. Playing with friends, or peers, begins in the second year. The first peer play we see is called parallel play—that is, two children sit side by side in the sandbox and dig with shovels: they are playing in parallel by engaging in the same activity at the same time. Eventually, this moves into coordinated play in which children assign roles to themselves and others—mommy and daddy and baby—and coordinate a rudimentary game in which they play cooperatively. This is hard work for preschoolers and most will continue to engage in both parallel and coordinated play until the end of their preschool years. Pretend play becomes more complex over time and is most complex in children who are very familiar to one another, such as siblings. We begin to see rule-bound play, such as board games and sports, emerging as a form of play as children enter their school years.

THE MASTERY DRIVE, SCAFFOLDING AND ENCOURAGING INDEPENDENT PLAY

Many developmental psychologists believe that children have a natural drive called ‘mastery’ that motivates them to try to figure things out, or master them. The mastery drive can be seen in a baby who has just learned to stand up who tries to practice it over and over, while you’re trying to change him, when it’s time for bed, etc, as if driven to do it. And on a smaller scale, a child who figures out how to work a toy like a jack-in-the-box will do that over and over again, too. This concept of mastery is one we want to build on with our kids. Mastery is important because, along with driving development, it encourages children to be self-reliant.

To build on mastery behaviors, we can play with children and introduce them to new toys. These things will also build on children’s ability to play independently. When you give a child a toy to play with for the first time, call their attention to it, show them the toy and tell them about it, demonstrating what it does, then let the child try it, with guidance from you. You might need to break it down into steps for him, or hand him a piece in a way that will fit. Let the child explore the toy once you have introduced it, as trial and error is an important part of mastery. You want to do a dance, in playing with your child, between guiding and following. It is your chance to raise the level of play so the child is ‘stretched’ to new possibilities, but following your child’s lead means keeping his interest and enjoyment.

The preeminent child psychologist Lev Vygotsky coined the term ‘scaffolding’ to describe a mechanism driving child development: interaction with a more experienced partner, he argued, leads a child to act on a higher level than he would on his own. Research has shown that the closer the challenging play is to the child’s own level, the more the child gets from the interaction—in other words, a more experienced partner who engages the child in play or activity just beyond what he himself is capable of does the most to spur child development. Parents are the best available “more experienced partners” because we know so well what “one level up” is for our children.

So what does scaffolding look like in parent-child play? A child is driving a toy car back and forth on the floor—what can you do? You can respond to what she is doing by commenting (“You’re driving that red car”), join her in her play (maybe get a toy car, too), introduce turn-taking (“I’ll zoom my car and then you zoom yours”) and build her play slowly by introducing a long block or big book propped up that forms an incline to roll the car down. Or perhaps you could lead her into racing two cars to see which is faster. Or the two of you can pick out targets and see if the car can reach them. You could get out more cars and build some roads for them to drive on. So you see how you can build on a child’s simple action.

Once you get your child started in this kind of extended play, back off for a bit. You’ve set him up with an activity and he should be able to keep going with it for a few minutes—provided he is not sleepy, hungry, or upset. At first a child may only play for five minutes on his own, but this will be extended over time as he gets practice at it. Strange as it may seem, playing with your child is the best way to get your child to play well on his own! You can use a timer, if you like, to set a limit on your playtime so that the end is signaled by a neutral object rather than by you: “I have ten minutes to play—what would you like to do? When the timer rings, I have to go start dinner, but until then we can play together.” Chances are, you’ll then get to start dinner without a little person under foot. By playing with your child a little bit every day, you will be helping your child develop and your child will start to play more on his own. Play time gives your child lots of positive attention and helps keep the bond with you strong.

Play is important for child development in so many ways—get down on the floor and have fun. You’ll be glad you did. And come to one of the play days on April 29th to get lots of great ideas about activities for kids.

Lindsay Dunckel, Ph.D. and Grass Valley mother of two, is the Program Coordinator for Parent Support and Education for First 5 Nevada County.