How Does a Baby's Understanding of Play Develop?

Your Child's Social Skills

Children are interested in their peers, but since their social skills are not yet fully developed, they don't know how to make friends or how to maintain them even if they do. However, deep down, they long to play with other children. Are you curious about how your child's social skills progress step by step? Let's see:

• Initially, your baby plays alone.

• Later, they enter a spectator role and start watching the games of older children.

• After spending some time with other children, they move towards parallel play. Parallel play is playing together in the same space but independently of each other. This is a type of play where they appear to be playing together but continue their games on their own. For example, several children might gather and play with sand without talking to each other.

• These parallel play sessions later turn into games where they move together. In such games, children engage in related actions. They play close to each other but according to the different ideas they create in their own minds. During this phase, there is still no exchange of ideas or mutual interaction needed to transition to the next stage.

• Finally, they begin to engage in cooperative play. In contrast to the previous stage, in this stage, play is purely for the sake of interacting with others, and games become richer and the playtime more productive. The aspect of play where they can use their imagination has also increased.

Give Your Child Suggestions

You can help your baby by explaining what they can do as they go through these stages and by offering some suggestions. Accordingly, after your baby starts engaging in parallel or cooperative play, you can guide them with sentences like, “Look how nice Zeynep’s action is, she is feeding her baby, could you take her this milk and feed them together?” or “Ali is building a train station, shall we help him? Ali, can we play with you? Can we plant these trees around the train station?” You can help them create ideas in their minds that will facilitate their participation in play. Every moment you help will improve their play habits.