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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.
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