My daughter loves to play pretend. You can often find her running around the house with various princess dolls having a conversation about the Beast (from Beauty and the Beast), playing for hours in a day with her coveted doll house in her room, or cooking a delicious meal in her kitchen. I am usually assigned a role, though she typically decides she is the Mommy and I can be anyone else. Ava loves to "vacuum and swiffer the floor" (won't this come in handy one day), get the mail, deliver letters, and rock her babies. She's engaging in typical child behavior, but the benefits of this play are tremendous.
Make believe and pretend play offer great opportunities for learning. It absolutely shows a shift in a child's thinking and their ability to demonstrate a form of abstract thinking. Do you realize the various skills and knowledge your child is acquiring through pretend play? Make believe boosts language skills, social skills, abstract thinking, problem solving, helps children to develop a sense of self, allows them to navigate emotions and safely explore the world in which they live.
Imitating Mom and Dad is one of the first ways children engage in pretend play. Whether its pushing their mower behind Daddy when he cuts the grass, cooking dinner in their Fisher Price kitchen, or (like my daughter) always trying to push the buttons on the debit card machine at the grocery store, kids imitate what they see. Find ways to let them participate in daily life with you through imitative play. This boosts their confidence and self-esteem.
Acting out real-life situations (such as going to the doctor) builds on what children know through experience, and it can also help them overcome fears they may have. My daughter loves the doctor kit she received at Christmas time, and this has helped ease fears of taking her temperature because she's familiar with how that works now, what it is, and knowing that it doesn't hurt. She practically tells the nurses what to do now when we go in for a check-up!
Providing children with a variety of props, such as boxes, hats, scarves, binoculars and doctor kits, are great ways to encourage make believe. Playing is exactly what children should be doing. In the end, kids are getting much more out of pretending to be on a flying pirate ship or saving someone from a burning building than they are out of the $4 flashcards you might have picked up at the store.