Play, Childhood

Independent-Play Development

The first type of object play begins when infants gain the ability to grasp objects and mouth them. The next stage, which often exists concurrently with mouthing, is simple manipulation, such as swinging, banging, and throwing. Mouthing and indiscriminate simple manipulation are examples of how play can have no necessary purpose yet be enjoyable and enriching. However, the following stages begin to involve more focused play. The next stage that occurs is functional play, when a child plays with an object according to its physical features, such as spinning a propeller or pressing a button. When infants become proficient at functional play, they will gradually be able to perform this type of manipulation with two objects at the same time. However, the combinations created in this play are usually inappropriate according to the properties of the objects. A child in this stage may bang on a toy phone with a spoon but over time will gain the ability to bring two objects together appropriately.

When most infants enter pretense play, they engage in acts that are symbolically appropriate to what the objects they are playing with represent. Instead of making sounds or using complete actions that would go along with pretense play, the child only hints at the pretense. The true pretense play that evolves from this first stage involves applying real-world meaning to an object during play. This begins as solely directed toward the self but over time will be applied to others, such as the child's mother or a doll.

As children develop the ability to use representations further and further from the physical attributes of an object, they will eventually be able to pretend that an object is something completely different and use it in such a manner. An example of this substitution would be a child who puts a block to his or her ear and talks into the block as if it were a telephone. The child then develops the ability to combine pretense play into sequences. Over time, children acquire the skills to apply the ability of sequencing to separate acts of substitution. Last, children develop the ability to hold more than one substitution at a time and pretend two objects are something they are not, and use them in accordance with these symbols.

...