From Symbolic Thought
Your bell rings. You open the door and find a little green ogre and a superhero standing there. You feign surprise, and then offer a treat.It's Halloween, of course, the time of year when adults and children embrace make-believe. But experts say that dress-up or pretend play, besides being so much fun, is too important to relegate to just one day a year. It deserves a place in kids' lives all year long.
From a baby's first game of peek-a-boo to a teen's starring role in the class play, the imaginative process "calls on all the skills your child has and takes them one step further," says Charlotte Doyle, professor of psychology at Sarah Lawrence College. Consider just a few of the ways it helps our young ones grow and develop.
Emotional Awareness and Social Skills
"I'll be the mommy, and you be the baby," three-year-old Abbie Koschik of Montclair, New Jersey, directs a friend. "Then I'll be the baby and you be the mommy. Don't cry, baby. Mommy has a bottle for you."
This is a fairly common scene among preschoolers. Take some time to deconstruct it, though, and we see the brilliance of play. Abbie is showing some of the qualities necessary for lifelong success: leadership, initiative, self-control, cooperation and the remarkable capacity for empathy -- she's imagining and representing the perspectives of both the mother and the baby. That's an awesome feat, and it's one no other creature in the animal kingdom can match. Not bad for a little girl who still needs her nap every day.
In very practical terms, pretend play also helps kids practice social customs. During a game of house, for example, a child might rehearse saying "please" and "thank you" or welcoming guests into the home and making them feel comfortable. It's also a safe way for young children to handle new and difficult situations -- which is why school or visit-to-the-doctor themes are so common. On top of this, pretending does wonders for confidence and self-esteem, says Cagle McDonald, the artistic director of Cagle & Company, a children's theater group in Dobbs Ferry, New York. "It's very powerful when a child is able to get his ideas for play acknowledged by his peers," she says.
Language, Reading, Math and Science
Two-year-old Gracie Callahan of Crossville, Tennessee, is playing tea party with her mother. She pretends to sip from her cup, and then says, "More," encouraging her mom to continue the game with her.
Gracie and other toddlers are at the adorable, and significant, age when symbolic thought begins.
"All of a sudden, babies can 'make believe,' " says educational psychologist Doris Bergen of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Bergen, a former preschool teacher, explains that reading and math involve a similar abstract process: A child has to know that squiggles on paper are symbols representing a word or a number. Gracie's tea party is thus setting the stage for later learning.
Engaging the Mind
As children grow, pretend play continues to go hand-in-hand with academic readiness: Kids enjoy pretending so much that they'll stretch their vocabularies and knowledge to be better at it. A first-grader might pick up the word "stethoscope" when playing doctor. Fourth-graders setting up an elaborate space adventure will soak up information about astronomy and astrophysics, and hone their reading skills as they develop their story line. At every age and stage, pretend play speeds learning.Thinking and Planning
When toddlers like Gracie experience their first creative thoughts, many areas of the mind, says Doris Bergen, are engaged: emotion, intelligence, language, the senses, motor skills. Using these facilities simultaneously creates dense synaptic connections, building a multidimensional architecture in the brain. "A more elaborate play life may mean the brain is more elaborate in terms of the thinking process," she says.
What a perfect plan that the areas of the brain involved in thinking and planning develop so early and strengthen with use. How, for example, could a preschooler solve the simplest problem without the ability to imagine an answer? Or why would a teenager plan and set goals if he couldn't envision the outcome of all his efforts? Advanced intellectual functioning -- the ability to think hypothetically, and logically carry out a plan -- is an outgrowth of pretend play. The imagination it requires keeps the mind sharp, flexible and open to new opportunities.
All of the people in a child's life -- parents, grandparents, teachers and family friends -- have a role in perpetuating the wonder and delight of pretend play. Children really need three things from us, says Cagle McDonald, who has been a creativity specialist for kids for 12 years:
1. Deep background. Fantasy stories such as Thumbelina and Peter Pan feed the imagination. "As you read, be funny and expressive," suggests McDonald. "On a second reading, be the narrator and encourage your child to act out the parts." Kids are also enchanted with the real world, and there are hundreds of meaty realistic roles to make use of right in your own community. Help your child notice the folks who work at the grocery store, bank, construction site, restaurant, zoo, firehouse, doctor's office or library. What special clothes are they wearing? What tools are they using? Try recreating the scene at home.
2. Fun props. Hold onto those Halloween costumes, and pick up extras when they're on sale. Other good choices for the pretend shelf: hand and finger puppets, blocks, dolls, hats, toy animals, gauzy fabric, necklaces, doctors' kits, toy phones, play money and cash registers, shopping bags and cardboard boxes. And remember that part of creativity is improvising props. My son, Charlie, loved to use his old crib sheet as a cape for Batman and as a sash for Peter Pan's sword.
3. Real respect. Adults show that they value pretend play in several important ways. Your child may want you to be the attentive audience for some part of her play. Or she may be stuck and need a suggestion or two -- "Maybe the baby would like a bath now," or "What about using these scarves in your costume?"
Be especially careful to enhance, not control, the action. Mostly, your child needs your gift of space and time to play. That's especially important in an era when organized sports, TV and video games have been encroaching on imaginative territory.
"There's nothing quite like the power of pretend," sums up Paul Harris, author of The Work of the Imagination and a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "Imagination," he says, "is the distinctive ability of human beings." Now that's a thought to play with.