Important Types of Play in Your Child's Development

Solitary play is just what it sounds like—when your child plays alone. This type of play is important because it teaches a child how to keep himself entertained, eventually setting the path to being self-sufficient. Any child can play independently, but this type of play is the most common in younger children around ages 2 or 3. At that age, they are still pretty self-centered and lack good communication skills. If a child is on the shy side and doesn't know his playmates well, he may prefer this type of play.

Onlooker play is when a child simply observes other children playing and doesn't partake in the action. It's common for younger children who are working on their developing vocabulary. Don't worry if your little one is behaving this way. It could be that the child feels shy, needs to learn the rules, or maybe is the youngest and wants just to take a step back for a while.

Put two 3-year-olds in a room together and this is what you are likely to see: the two children having fun, playing side by side in their own little world. It doesn't mean that they don't like one another, they are just engaging in parallel play. Despite having little social contact between playmates, children who parallel play actually learn quite a bit from one another like taking turns and other social niceties. Even though it appears they aren't paying attention to each other, they truly are and often mimic the other one's behavior. As such, this type of play is viewed as an important bridge to the later stages of play.

Slightly different from parallel play, associative play also features children playing separately from one another. But in this mode of play, they are involved with what the others are doing—think children building a city with blocks. As they build their individual buildings, they are talking to one another and engaging each other. This is an important stage of play because it helps little ones develop a whole host of skills—socialization (what should we build now?) and problem solving (how can we make this city bigger?), cooperation (if we work together we can make our city even better) and language development (learning what to say to get their messages across to one another). Through associative play is how children begin to make real friendships.

Cooperative play is where all the stages come together and children truly start playing together. It is common in older preschoolers or in younger preschoolers who have older siblings or have been around a lot of children). Cooperative play uses all of the social skills your child has been working on and puts them into action. Whether they are building a puzzle together, playing a board game, or enjoying an outdoor group game, cooperative play sets the stage for future interactions as your child matures into an adult.