Emerging Imaginative Play

For your child, an imaginary world is as real as the physical world is to you. At this stage, your child is yet unable to distinguish fantasy from reality, but this does not mean you must discourage imaginative play. What you can do instead is to guide your child in making the appropriate actions regarding his or her imaginary world.

Here are a couple of things you can do to encourage the development of imaginative play in your toddler:

• Provide props – Make sure that props such as hats, scarves, crowns, staffs and themed dress up clothes are freely available. Your child may still be too little to wear these, but you or an older sibling can demonstrate the use of these props just the same.
• Read some more – Choose short, imaginative stories to read for your child. A good example is the picture book Salamander Room by Anne Mazer. Soon enough, your child will start acting out his or her favorite stories.
• Invest in open-ended toys – Wooden blocks, Lego pieces for toddlers, arts and crafts materials, and child-sized cookery toys all encourage imaginative play among children.
• Limit passive screen-based entertainment –If you find screen-based entertainment pieces mostly passive, you can limit your toddlers’ screen time and provide more opportunity for free play with open-ended toys and household objects instead.
• Opt for screen characters that encourage virtual participation–When you do have to expose your children to screen-based entertainment, make sure to expose them to screen characters that encourage imaginative play and let your child participate in the discourse. Take Dora the Explorer, for instance. The program follows a simple linear format that takes the main character to adventures, most of the time throwing questions at the audience and letting them repeat her words. To further encourage this, you can provide suits and props for this screen character and encourage your child to enact scenes from the program as well.
• Tolerate mess once in a while– Imaginative play is essentially messy. There are props to put away and craft materials to clean up. However, the benefits for your child far outweigh your effort at cleaning things up afterwards!                                                                                                                                                                                                              

As today’s society bombards toddlers with so many options they can barely keep up with anyway, the bigger is your challenge to encourage meaningful imaginative play. Do any of those mentioned above on a regular basis, and surely your child’s imagination will remain piqued, active, and healthy.