Pretend Play in Children: What is It?

For young grade school age children, say five to eight years of age, pretend play is quite common. Generally dissipating by eight years of age, children who engage in pretend play often begin as early as pre-school. For parents, the pretend play often is found in hiding as many children find great embarrassment in pretend play. Encouraging our children to engage in pretend playing will provide for a more well rounded, and useful, playing experience.

When children engage in pretend play, they often assume a variety of roles. While some children act as the director of their plays, outlining scenes and moving characters about, others will be involved in a more acting type role. Assuming a variety of characters, children who engage in actor pretend play are working to expand their horizons and may begin to formulate opinions about careers and lifestyle choices.

Engaging in actor play, among the genders, commonly varies. With girls generally seeking out nurturing type roles, acting as mothers, nurses and sisters, boys will engage in more risky and volatile characters, becoming action heroes, cowboys and even indians. One common theme among children is the actor pretend play involving a school theme. Using dolls, mirrors and even each other, children commonly will act out the character of teacher and students in a unified forum. This type of pretend play can be very revealing to a parent who wants to peak into the average day of a child who is attending school as the grade school child will often mimic the activities he or she experienced at school that day.

As stated, in contrast to actor play, some children will engage in director play in which they sit alone, moving characters about a uniformed platform. For many girls, these characters may be Barbies while boys tend to use cars or action figures. Commonly, when engaged in director play, the grade school child will narrarate each character or may move the character about in a slow fashion. Zoo figures are often commonly used in both sexes. When engaged in directory play, parents will commonly cite the narrative expression to be more common than silent play as children enjoy narrating the story line while moving the characters about. When doing so, they will engage any adult who will listen.

Added to this already developed sense of pretend play, many grade school teachers will further encourage play time at school. With the support of the grade school teacher, within the classroom setting, even children who have ceased to pretend play may resume doing so in light of the additonal support and social networking with other children. Overall, however, children beyond age eight should begin to decrease the degree to which pretend play becomes a pre-occupation.

As parents, understanding the dynamics of early grade school playtime will work to ensure we are providing the proper environment for the play style to take place. With pretend play common among grade school children, be sure to supply the right figures, toys and dress up clothing to foster the pretend play and narrating in your child.