How can play help your child to learn, grow, and develop new skills? Play may not seem like an educational activity. But research shows that play has benefits galore. Even though play-time may equal fun-time in your child’s mind, you’re about to see how everything from dress-up to building blocks can help their social-emotional development.
What Is Social-Emotional Development?
Social and emotional development go hand-in-hand. While these are technically two separate developmental areas, the categories of growth are largely dependent on one another. This means as your child develops more complex emotional skills, they may have more sophisticated social behaviors.
As the name implies, social development includes interpersonal skill-building. Making friends, taking turns in a conversation, listening and speaking, sharing, cooperating with others, giving someone enough personal space/respecting boundaries, showing empathy for others, participating in a group, and following directions are all examples of social skills that a young child develops.
Emotional development goes beyond interacting with others and encompasses a set of internal skills that will help your child to express and control their behaviors alone, with other people, or in a group setting.
Your child has always had feelings. But there was a time when they could not understand, interpret, or express their emotions. As your child grows, they will develop the ability to recognize feelings, name or identify the feelings verbally, express these feelings in socially acceptable ways, and even understand that other people have feelings that are the same or different than theirs.
How Can Play Impact Social-Emotional Development?
Social and emotional skills develop at a rapid pace during the first few years of life. But this doesn’t mean you can expect that your child will understand how to share, express their feelings verbally, communicate in a group setting, or master any other social or emotional ability on their own. While these skills do appear in an expected set of steps of milestones, you will also need to provide plenty of experiences for your child to develop socially and emotionally.
Unlike academics, social and emotional skills won’t require “lessons” or even a school setting to build. Instead, your child can develop these abilities through informal or everyday activities—such as play. Keep in mind, there isn’t one type of play or one definition of this activity. Instead, play encompasses a world of experiences and explorations. Sometimes play happens during a planned event or activity. But other times it is completely spontaneous.
As your child plays, they may create their own pretend stories to act out, paint or play with clay, color with crayons and markers, build with blocks, make discoveries in a science center at school or at home, run, jump, kick a ball, catch a ball, participate in a formal or team sport, race toy cars around a track, dance, make music, or engage in any number of other options.
According to a clinical report published in the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) journal Pediatrics, play provides the young child with the chance to build self-regulation, executive function, language, and social-emotional skills that encourage relationship-building and problem-solving. Group play experiences allow the young child to explore social settings and communicate in different ways. These include negotiation, listening, speaking, and taking perspectives.
Along with interpersonal experiences that a child gets through play, these types of activities also create an environment that promotes emotional discovery. Play may directly provide information about emotions and emotional identification. This type of activity may include play acting scenarios that are emotionally charged, playing with dolls, or even playing a board game that focuses on feelings. The activity gives your child the chance to think about different feelings, use their words to name the emotions, and possibly even act out emotions that someone else may experience.
Could your child develop social-emotional skills without the benefits of play? Possibly. Should your child go without play? You probably already know the answer to this question is no. While there are benefits to traditional classroom-based, teacher-led or lecture types of instruction, play is essential for the young child’s development. The social context of many play activities provides an environment that your child needs to experience—and not just learn about. It gives your child the chance to build relationships, communicate on many different levels, use language, and foster skills that they might not otherwise get the chance to build.
How Can You Encourage Your Child To Learn Through Play?
School, preschool, and formal classes provide the young child with the opportunity to develop socially and emotionally through play. But this doesn’t mean you need to rely 100 percent on your child’s teacher. Parents and other non-school caregivers can create play experiences at home, at the park, or in other settings that help children to build new skills.
Even though a group environment is an obvious way that children can develop socially, your kiddo doesn’t always need to participate in a “class” to grow as a social being. The make-believe scenarios they imagine during solo pretend play sessions, playing with an imaginary friend, or acting out interpersonal scenes with dolls, action figures, or stuffed animals can help your child to practice social skills, communicate, use their words, practice taking turns, and sometimes even practice sharing. Your child can also learn about and explore emotions through pretend play, literacy-based activities, and the arts.
Interactions with an adult, such as yourself, can also help your child to build social, emotional, and communication skills—whether it’s playing a board game together, kicking a soccer ball around the backyard as a family, building with blocks in the living room, or talking as your child paints a picture!
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