Encourage and expand your toddler's play when they are engaging in imaginative activities
What to do
- Ask your toddler if you can play with them.
- Use language and actions that might be used in the real-life version of the game you're playing. This could be saying, "Excuse me, can we have a table for two?" or "My teddy is poorly, he says his tummy hurts." Or taking a coat and hanging it on a peg.
Good to know
Play can be a great way to expand your toddlers' horizons: you can pretend to do things they haven't experienced yet and use play to recreate things they have already seen.
They might find things they haven't experienced at all a bit tricky now, and you might find even if you're playing a game about monsters, that the monster ends up doing something very normal, like having dinner and going to bed!