Stages of Play: The Importance of Playtime

Having age-appropriate expectations for your child is crucial. Babying will stop her from testing her capabilities and developing, while having expectations beyond her years will set her up for early anxiety and the possibility of "performance failure" and disappointment.

Play develops for children through a number of stages:

• Exploratory play – using the senses of touch, taste, and smell to comprehend new experiences.
• Relational play – using things as they are meant to be used. For example, using a fire truck to pretend to extinguish a fire.
• Symbolic play – using an object as something else. For example, using a house brick as an oven to cook on.

Newborn babies are so attached to their mother that they have no notion of being separate or having their own identity. By twelve months a unique personality will be more apparent, but your little one will not be ready to play cooperatively with other children until her brain has developed more fully and language skills have developed to a point where communication with other children becomes more effective.