Let’s pretend – the power of imaginative play

“Play is a conduit through which children nurture the social and cognitive skills required to learn how to learn.”^[1] 

If your child holds a toy brick (or teddy bear) to their ear, speaks for a moment, and then hands it to you, you probably hold it to your ear and immediately start a conversation with the person on the other end of the ‘phone’. So how does pretend and fantasy play support cognitive development? 

When your child first starts to pretend that an object is something else, the objects will often have some features in common. Their block ‘phone’ might be a similar shape to the phone that they have seen you use. However, pretending still involves some important thinking skills and this early pretending is an important step in their development.  

When your child pretends one object is something different, they put the identity of the actual object to one side and think about what the object is representing in their play.  

Alongside this, when pretending with others they have to learn to consider the thoughts of someone else, so in this play they are demonstrating an awareness not only of their own thinking about representation, but also an awareness of you and their other playmates.^[2]   

As they get older, your child will gradually include more make-believe and fantasy in their play. 

This may include characters from their imagination starting to take a role, stories being made up and adventures adapted from the stories that they have heard or seen.  

Some researchers found that this fantasy play supports the development of executive function.  

The Harvard Center on the Developing Child describes executive function as the ‘brain’s air traffic control system’.^[3] When we talk about executive functions, we are talking about a set of skills that helps us to think about problems, to plan, to control our impulses and to carry out actions. 

Executive function skills help us to think about different information at the same time in order to solve a problem, help us to focus on the information that we need and help us to stop ourselves from doing something, for example, when waiting for a turn.  

Babies are born with the ability to develop these skills, but they need lots of different experiences to develop them and these skills continue to develop during childhood and into adolescence – this is where pretend play, fantasy play and role play comes in.   

Scientists believe that practising helps children to develop executive functioning and they will need repeated experiences to develop and strengthen the connections in their brain that support these skills. 

They suggest that in order to pretend, a child needs to maintain their attention on their fantasy, use their working memory to think about scripts for their play and stop (and return to) play if interrupted.^[4] 

So... Let's pretend!  What can you do to support your child’s pretend and fantasy play?  

• Read stories together and talk about them afterwards, these will give them plenty of ideas.  
• Go to different places to give your child experiences that they can use as ideas when they pretend.   
• Have a selection of objects and fabrics that they can use in their play. Younger children might need more realistic props, but as they get older things that can be lots of different things will encourage them to pretend.    
• Get involved but don’t take over, follow your child’s lead and join in with their play if they include you.   
• Give them time, when you can, to get really involved in their imaginative play so that they can develop ideas as they play.   
• Enjoy watching your child’s imaginative play develop, and next time you are having a conversation on a toy brick mobile phone, think about how you are helping your child to develop their thinking skills!   

References: 

[1] Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R., Berk, L., & Singer, D. (2009). A mandate for playful learning in preschool: Presenting the evidence. Oxford University Press. 

[2] Goswami, U. (2020) Cognitive development and cognitive neuroscience. The learning brain. London: Routledge.   

[3] Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (2011). Building the Brain’s “Air Traffic Control” System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function: Working Paper No. 11. 

[4] Thibodeau-Nielsen, R.B., Gilpin, AT, Nancarrow A.F., Pierucci, J.M & Brown, M.M. (2020) ‘Fantastical pretense’s effects on executive function in a diverse sample of preschoolers’. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. 68.