Plays with soft toys or dolls recreating real life situations

Your baby is interested in the people around them, and as their memory develops and they have a wider range of experiences you might notice them recreating familiar situations when playing with soft toys or dolls. This play is the first step towards pretend and fantasy play and supports your baby to explore familiar situations and think about the things they have noticed.

Starting to pretend 

At this point, your baby’s pretend play might be very simple, they might use a spoon to pretend to feed a doll or teddy or hold a doll and give it a hug. When they pretend, they will probably use objects as the thing that they are and might not pretend one thing is something else yet.  

They are beginning to imitate actions they have seen and recreate familiar events. This imitation helps your baby to learn about the world around them and supports their social development. They will often want to recreate their experiences so it might be a good time for them to have a doll or soft toy to play with, if they do not already have one. They might carry the doll around, kiss it or give it ‘dinner’.  Your baby’s early pretending is imitation, at the moment they do not have the social skills to take another role, so they copy the actions they have seen but they are not taking the role of another person. [1] 

Pretending helps your baby to begin to recognise and explore the objects that are important in the world around them. [1] For example, they might want to pretend to iron or hoover, as these are things, they have seen the adults around them doing. Playing with toy versions of everyday objects is an important step in symbolic representation, your baby recognises the toy cup is a representation of the real cups that are used for drinks.  

What next? 

As your baby’s cognitive skills develop, they will be able to pretend that one object is something else. They will develop their understanding of other people and you will see them exploring different points of view in their imaginative play. Pretend play will help your baby to develop their awareness that different people have different points of view and as they develop, they will explore these points of view in their play. As their speech develops, they will use language to share their ideas and as part of their pretend play. 

References 

[1] Bruce, T. (2011). Learning Through Play: For Babies, Toddlers and Young Children, (2edn.). Abingdon: Hodder Education.