Discover the benefits of playing “pretend”
Play make-believe
Early childhood is a time of significant importance for a child's development, particularly for improving language, communication and psychomotor skills, but also for cognitive, social and emotional development.
Socio-emotional and affective skills, for example, must be worked on from a very early age, through the promotion of positive and significant psychosocial experiences for the child's healthy growth.
These skills are essential for adapting to different spaces or environments (social, physical and cultural), allowing children to learn to create bonds and strengthen interactions with other children and even adults. Through these social interactions, children also acquire communication skills. In this way, they learn to express feelings and ideas and develop their relational, emotional and social intelligence.
The Importance of Playing “ Make-Believe ”
Pretend play is one of the best ways to work on social, emotional and affective skills, as well as abilities such as imagination and creativity. By playing pretend, children increase their ability to observe, express themselves, listen and develop empathy.
There is no doubt that the process of “pretending” or “making believe” is very important for child development, because through it the child learns about themselves and others.
By “pretending” to be someone else, the child experiences and interprets other roles, becoming aware of other realities different from their own, but also of the feelings of others, that is, they learn to understand the world around them.
“Make-believe”: interpretation of different social roles
By playing other roles, children learn to be more independent, to find solutions to different problems, to cooperate with their peers, to express their own ideas and to accept the ideas of others. In this way, we understand that the ability to put oneself in someone else's shoes is fundamental for their social and emotional development. This ability can be acquired through the promotion of stimulating and meaningful activities that allow children to relate healthily with others and interpret the world around them. These activities should involve acting out and imitating imaginary people or situations.
When a child plays “make-believe”, they are fantasizing, inventing characters and creating situations, thus exploring their most creative, free and spontaneous side.
