What Are the Benefits of Dramatic Play in Early Childhood?
Scripted, planned activities are replacing dramatic play in early childhood programs. The attitude is that learning, rather than being natural and fun, needs to be academic. Many child care centers, such as Kindercare, even have a curriculum for the infant program. According to the Association of Childhood Education International (ACEI), dramatic play is imperative to a child's growth in all areas of learning and cannot be replaced by adult instruction. The major areas of child development benefit from dramatic play and you can encourage it at home.
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Language
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Dramatic play encourages a child to communicate his thoughts through the eyes of anyone he chooses. He mimics what he sees the adults in his life doing.
By pretending to be Daddy, he internalizes words and sounds that Daddy makes so that he can use them in dramatic play. The benefits of an early foundation in language cross over into all areas of learning.
Social
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Young children learn the foundations of social behavior through dramatic play. By pretending they are someone else, they learn how other people feel and act. According to Elena S. Yalow, Ph.D, children learn empathy from dramatic play activities. A child engaged in dramatic play with other children benefits from the back-and-forth interaction. She has the opportunity to be the boss, the queen, the mom, the child or even the dog. She internalizes different roles. She can lead, follow and change her mind without repercussion.
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Emotional
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Dramatic play allows children to sort through emotions and situations that they may not understand. When a child pretends that his mom or dad has died, shortly after someone else actually has, it's his way of internalizing and sorting through emotions and situations that are difficult. In a safe environment, anything can happen. In dramatic play, he has the power to control events and learn the difference between real and make-believe. Wishes can come true and he can be anything he imagines.
Motor Skills
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Gross and fine motor skills develop rapidly in early childhood. At birth, a baby can't even hold her own head up, but as she grows and develops, so do her muscles. Soon she's sitting, walking and skipping. Dramatic play benefits this development. When she puts clothes on her doll, she needs to use fine motor skills. When she runs across the yard, she uses large muscles. Through repetition, she works her muscles and gains increased function.
Cognitive
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Engaging in dramatic play develops cognitive function, the brain or academic portion of development. Specifically, free play develops self-regulation, which is the function that allows a child to pay attention when need be and control his emotions. Dramatic play also benefits the cognitive area of development in math, reading, writing and more. When a child pretends that she is shopping, she is learning to associate the play money as a symbol for real money, the doll as a symbol for a baby and so on. These associations allow her to more easily make the leap to letters as symbols for words. When she "buys" a stuffed animal, she is associating numbers and math. Academics become fun and easier to internalize.
Conclusion
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With the decrease of dramatic play in early childhood programs, parents need to encourage free play in the home. This could be as simple as giving your child an unused cell phone or as elaborate as setting up a section of the home with dolls, a play kitchen, a large box full of dress-up clothes and more. The goal is for your child to imagine, grow, learn and develop to his full potential. Play, after all, is a child's hard work.
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- Photo Credit Jennifer Streit 2009
