Stages of Social Play

07/25/2018

I know that this can be hard to believe, but play starts at birth. Yes, your little baby wiggling around and doing random movements is actually the beginning of their play. Now I’m not going to go too much into the research behind it because frankly, all the technical jargon can be complicated (I don’t know why research can’t just simplify things) but anyway there are six stages of social play your little ones do throughout their childhood.

As we already discussed above, the first stage starts at infancy. The technical term is called unoccupied play. Again, this starts at birth when your infant is making random movements with no obvious purpose.

The second stage is called solitary play.  This stage starts in late infancy and is common towards the beginning of the toddler stage. Children play independently and often don’t notice other children nearby. Please keep in mind that all age groups can experience this type of play and that is okay!

The third stage is called onlooker play. This play occurs most frequently in toddler years but can occur as children become older too. This stage is when children watch others play, but no effort is brought to join the play. Often questions will be asked, but the child is more curious about the action, not necessarily excited about playing.

The fourth stage is called parallel play. Again this usually happens mostly in the toddler age, but can sometimes happen with older children. This is where children will play side-by-side but will have no interaction with anyone around them. Although they aren’t playing with one another, each child playing side-by-side are intuned to each other and will pay attention to the others actions.

The fifth stage is called associative play. This stage is where children become more interested in the other children, rather than the toys. They ask questions and have a conversation about the toys in front of them and together they start to build social skills and learn how to play together. Note: rules and formal guidelines aren’t established in this stage.

The last stage is called social play. This occurs around three to four years old and they begin to share toys and ideas. In this stage rules and guidelines are extremely important to the children. This helps children learn social skills, such as problem-solving, collaboration, and cooperation.

So here we have it. The six stages of social play. Hope this tidbit of information was fun and informative! Until next time.