His glare dispersed part-time villains as a light breeze and healthy imagination buoyed his invisible, yet fluttering, red cape.

Elsewhere on the playground, a village of miniature mamacitas sporadically nurtured their plastic babies.  While fending off occasional interlopers who had strayed from their villain duties, these mini-mamas prepared a feast of mud pies, dandelion salads, and murky beverages garnished with grass.  Their suspiciously compliant doll babies coincidentally awakened from their naps just in time to share the morning’s bounty.

Other denizens of the park that day: mothers, fathers, grandparents, and nannies.  Some of the adults busied themselves with newspapers or knitting; others tended squirming infants too small to play along with older siblings, but old enough to know something exciting was happening.  An occasional sincere shriek or a hard landing commanded the attention of the guardians, but beyond their supporting roles, few of the adults watched the kids at play.  That is because few adults know how to observe kids at play or what to look for.  Any parent who wonders about a child’s social development can perform an instant reality check by watching the child interact with the tools of play:  other children, adults, toys, household items, and the home itself.

During pretend play, children master several developmental milestones.  Playground negotiations use communication skills; the resulting compromises and turn taking increase the social (and emotional) repertoire of the participants.  The challenges of gravity and physics encourage thinking skills.  And teamwork helps kids to meet almost any playtime challenge.  Feats of imagined strength and bravery serve as antidotes to prior episodes of fear or powerlessness.  Children direct energy into the endless footsteps required to run, slide, hop, wiggle and climb.  Their daring ideas rely on natural creativity and the freedom to explore.  New teachable moments captivate young minds only if there was freedom to indulge in previous curiosity.  Even the rough and tumble of shifting social alliances will eventually reward the players by helping them discover the emotional resilience that lies within them.

Tips for older siblings:

By age 5 or 6, children will become capable of cooperating with each other to develop a plan for playing:

• assigning roles,
• loosely scripting the action, and
• infusing characters with specific traits that reveal personality.
• older children can create more definite beginnings, middles, and endings to their play plans.
• Although the play date might end for the day, the 5 and 6 year-olds can recapture the same theme from one play date to the next.

One of our family’s favorite photographs shows my Army veteran dad in his new uniform: pajamas and bathrobe.  The photo shows Dad perched at the edge of the sofa that dominated our den, as he dutifully fed a baby doll.

He had barely awakened and poured his coffee one Thanksgiving morning when a higher-ranking officer, my toddler daughter Nia, gave him his orders.

Having served as designated doll sitter on a previous occasion, he knew the drill.  Nia allowed Gramps to carry on with his joke telling and bonding with grandsons, as long as he tended to her doll.  If a burst of laughter or a raucous knee slap threatened to displace “Baby,” Nia approached and righted the bottle’s aim at her doll’s perpetually parted lips. If voices rose at the delivery of a punch line, my daughter admonished Gramps by pressing a dimpled index finger to her pursed lips that had only recently abandoned their own pacifier.  My dad always responded to her supervision with a good-natured smile, and by renewing his attention to doll duty.

Gramps might not have known how to explain the child development theory at work that morning, but he knew the importance of participating.  By playing along with his grandaughter, he clearly conveyed that her ideas were worthy of his efforts.  Joining in pretend play gives parents and other important people an opportunity to practice narration techniques like parallel talk.  When my mother offered Nia a running commentary on her activities by saying, “You wrapped your baby so carefully in her blanket,” or “You carry your baby on your hip like your mother carries you around,” she gave even more validation to the importance of the pretend play scenario.

Questions serve the same supportive purpose —  they stimulate more thinking, more creating. Extend the possibilities of playtime by asking your little one to tell you her baby’s name, which car can go faster, or why the lion is so quiet.  The spontaneity you add will demonstrate your attunement .  She knows you are paying attention when you wonder out loud where the pirates have hidden the marshmallows or why the teddy bear needs a Band-Aid.  When important adults become part of the setting for pretend play, they make it easier for children to immerse themselves in it.

Ways to boost the developmental benefits of pretend play:

• Add music.  Regular exposure to music has been correlated higher SAT scores, higher reading scores, elevating the mood of children, and even reducing misbehavior on school buses!

• Add dance.  Your kinesthetic learner will thank you.

• Add costumes (more on that in part 3 of this series on Sociodramatic Play).

• Add food.  The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is a terrific multi-age book that promotes healthy snacking — until day 6, that is!

• Add art.  The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats’ is a lovely starting point for making paper snowflakes and watercolor painting.

• Snap pictures for later discussion and memory enhancement.  Make a book of them.

• Ask your child for instructions on how to participate, or play a role.  Talk about planning skills!

Remember:

• Dramatic play strengthens every area of development.
• Pretend play empowers children to re-visit (and re-write the ending to) difficult or challenging events.
• Pretend play supports every area of future learning such as language and literacy; abstract thinking skills that convert into math and science ability; the bodily awareness that promotes physical fitness; and social skills.
• Adults and siblings participate in the play when they accept invitations to join in

One day a boy might be a tough guy – a man of few words who walks with a swagger; the next he’s a lost explorer trusting his hero friends to follow his cries for help.  Every child can be an Olympic champion – if Mom remembers to save the lids from the frozen orange juice for the medal ceremony.   For very little expenditure of money or time, parents can set the stage for the sociodramatic play that will benefit children for a lifetime.

You will greatly enhance their play time if you:

• Maintain an alert eye for props like real clothing, costumes, hats, purses, scarves, stethoscopes, or discarded keys on a real keychain.

• Always safety-test your finds.  Check for lead content and toy recalls.  Keep choking hazards away from children under 3, or children over 3 who still mouth explore.  Throw away broken toys, flimsy toys or  items with loose parts.  Keep in mind a time frame for the usefulness of the props.

• Conduct your searches at thrift stores, garage sales, and grandparents’ attics for interesting finds with built-in history lessons.

• Organize and store the supplies around themes.  Grocery store, or post office, for example.

• Securely tape a snapshot of items to storage shelves to encourage a fast, fun matching game at cleanup time.

• Color or decorate the boxes in which supplies are stored.  That will give a pre-reader as much information as a sign or label will give an adult.

• Label storage shelves and boxes with words.  Children with an emerging curiosity about reading and writing will be able have their intellectual needs met as soon as they realize they are interested — without having to ask (or wait for) an adult.

• Cheerfully expect to perform an opera of animal sounds when your living room becomes a petting zoo for the day.

• Change the pace at the end of the playtime with a calming, well-illustrated book related to the play theme.

• Save coupons, sale ads, paper bags, and empty cereal boxes to set up an excursion to a make-believe grocery store.

• Provide child-safe, age-appropriate, writing tools and paper for all the love letters, grocery lists, warning signs, parking tickets, etc., children will want to write.

• Provide adult supervision at all times.

Remember:

• Older children (by age 5 or 6) can plan their play episodes, and can sustain the plot from session to session.
• Cardboard boxes can be covered with contact paper to create makeshift desks, grocery store shelves, and checkout counters.
• An old microphone will spur some young children to sing a song or deliver a sermon.
• Stuffed animals do double duty as friends, audience members, characters, and oh yes, wildlife.
• Books and environmental print introduce valuable vocabulary words that sustain pretend play schemes.
• Worn-out or broken toys frustrate and endanger children.
• Adults affirm dramatic play by supplying props, costumes, and a safe space for exploration.