Parenting Pointers: Role Play

Kids love the chance to dress up as someone else for Halloween - and adults too. Role-playing can be a great activity year-round, as it encourages many important skills.

Melissa Bernstein (of the Melissa & Doug toy company) has some great Tips on the Importance of Role Play and Why Parents should Encourage their Children to Put Down the Remote or Nintendo and be Creative.

1. Allow your child to take part in choosing exactly how they will be dressed for the occasion, it gives them power and investment in the holiday.
2. Role play is a critical form of pretend play, and a crucial aspect of early childhood development. It is one of the best ways to help a child to develop an understanding of the world. When children are given the opportunity to CHOOSE a costume or character they wish to portray, they are given the ability to explore the areas they are most interested in.
3. Dressing up helps children (and adults!) to get rid of their fears and inhibitions, and be free to “act out” something they may not be comfortable expressing on a daily basis. Children develop social awareness, self confidence and are more open to exploring themselves and expressing pent-up thoughts or ideas.
4. Role play offers an excuse to let go of one’s inhibitions and be free. Such free, unstructured play offers tremendous benefits developmentally and a HIGH level of creativity! This will build strong imaginations and fertile, innovative minds.
5. The best costumes are ones in which children are truly transported to another place and begin to believe or act as if the character they’re portraying actually would.
6. Testing the personas of different characters is a great way to teach children about different roles and their various behaviors. A pirate can talk with an accent, a police officer can speak with authority, and a chef can come up with tantalizing recipes that are created and served to an enthusiastic audience. Role playing involves improvisation and having the awareness of how different characters act, and portraying the appropriate emotions and characteristics that depict them!
7. Grandparents can easily incorporate dress up and pretend play into play time with grandkids. They can create a special dress-up/pretend play closet or chest, and allow grandchildren to explore it whenever they visit.