Play and entertainment are not the same thing
You have heard many times the saying that play is the work of childhood. You have also heard many times the motto “Work hard and play hard”. How do these two come together? Well, probably they don’t. In our civilization playing hard points to entertainment, while play as the work of childhood points to something truly meaningful. While children nowadays might be consuming too much entertainment, their involvement in real play is in decline. We tend to entertain children too much, but we generally fail to provide them with the opportunity to engage in true play. While children can do without entertainment, without play they are bound to languish.
Entertainment is something we engage in to avoid boredom, to kill time in an idle way, avoiding effort. Watching a cartoon or a battery-propelled dog bark and wag its tail is entertainment.
Feeding your doll is easy to recognize as play. However, painting a fence (as described in “Tom Sawyer”) can be play too, just like baking cookies with Granny or even sweeping the floor. You have seen toddlers trying to do everything they see adults do, even the things we, adults, frown upon, as for us these are chores.
Play is coveted. Despite the fact that it takes effort and focus, that striving to do the thing properly might lead to frustration. No problem, we are prepared to try many times with the tenacity of an ant lugging a delicious crumb. Especially if we are an innocent child.
The golden age of pretend play
“Make-believe is the hallmark of young children’s play”, wrote W. George Scarlett in his seminal academic book “Children’s Play”. He says that young childhood is the golden age of pretend play – not only because young children (3-5) do it so well but also because no matter how a young child plays, make-believe is always present, even if we don’t see it directly.
“This point was brought home in a classic case study by Sylvia Feinburg (Feinburg, 1976) in which she described her son Douglas’s combat art. As a young boy, Douglas drew hundreds of pictures of battle scenes. To the casual observer, Douglas’s drawing would simply be seen as drawing, but Feinburg saw it differently. She noted how Douglas, while drawing, made battle sounds, shouted out military orders, and otherwise indicated that, for him, drawing was hardly a matter of producing pretty pictures. Rather, it was a matter of make-believe.” (Chapter 3)
This is a useful corrective for parents who assume their child has stopped pretending because the play looks more solitary or quiet. In fact, internal drama may be running at full intensity. What changes between three and five is not the presence of make-believe but its complexity and social dimension.
If you’d like to explore the idea further, you can find Sylvia G. Feinburg’s essay “Combat in Child Art” in the academic collection “Play: its role in development and evolution” on ResearchGate.
What makes children between 3 and 5 play
Children do not need external motivation to engage in make-believe play. They have an internal drive that serves real purposes.
Children play to make their dreams come true. They have so many wishes they cannot satisfy in real life – they want to drive cars and spaceships, to pet and tame tigers, to build castles, etc. Their only way to satisfy these wishes and avoid frustration is to engage in play and pretend. This is not a form of escapism but rather their age-appropriate way to engage with the big, real world that offers them so little agency. The more they learn about the world, the bigger their dreams and the richer their play.
Thus, children play to explore their interests. They are interested not only in what they see in their immediate surroundings but also in far-away places and times. They are naturally very interested in the lives of adults, but they are also interested in dinosaurs, forests, and the ocean depths. Here is why they love playing with dinosaurs, and they enrich their play with everything they have learned about the seas and the woodlands. It works both ways: while knowledge enriches play, play helps process and strengthen knowledge.
Children play to make friends. Play is the primary context in which young children relate to one another. This is the natural way to enjoy the company of their peers. This is how they learn to communicate, negotiate, take turns, manage conflict, and maintain a shared fiction that requires all participants to agree and adapt. These social skills are the foundation of every collaborative relationship they will have as students and adults, too.
Children play to overcome their anxieties. Pretend play helps them cope with their fears. They enact some of their negative experiences in play but do it in a healing way – at their own pace, on their own terms, taking control. Child psychologists use this property of play deliberately in therapeutic contexts, but it naturally stems from and operates in ordinary play as well. The more children naturally engage in play, the less they need therapy sessions.
I have watched this process at schools, playgrounds, and my own home, and I have learned that the best way to find out what preoccupies children is to observe them at play – all their fears, desires, social confusions, and family dynamics spill into play. And play is the natural way to negotiate these, to come out healed, competent, and empowered.
What happens when pretend play is in short supply
We have touched upon some of the reasons why play is so important for young children. It is vital, and entertainment cannot replace it or compensate for its lack. It may sound trivial, but I strongly encourage you to consider: How would you feel if you were deprived of the opportunity to satisfy at least some of your wishes, to explore your interests, to overcome your anxieties and fears or to make friends?
Follow-up
We love exploring symbolic play (also called pretend play, make-believe play, etc.) and sharing our findings, so follow our blog and social media channels for blog posts and mini-books.
Here are some of our older texts on symbolic play:
The importance of symbolic play
How to Encourage Symbolic Play
Lydia Staikova holds an MA in English and Bulgarian Literature and Linguistics from Shoumen University, where she studied pedagogy, psychology, and child development. She has taught English and counseled students for thirty years. She is a parent and homeschooled her children for several years. Lydia writes all editorial content on mrfoxcrafts.com. See full bio here.