Family Dramas and Playing House

Family dramas are the ones most frequently re-enacted: toilet learning; being disciplined; bedtime; starting school; divorce; family discord; illness; moving; travel.

Kids want to emulate their parents and experience their roles. Playing house activities such as shopping, cooking, setting the table, laundering, tea parties, baby care, phone conversations, and dressing up are consistently played out. This is good preparation - or rehearsal - for nurturing a real family later on.

Children will often behave in a much more mature fashion when in dramatic play: pay greater attention in pretend school than real school; may sit still longer at a make-believe tea party than at the family's dinner table.

Expectations and Anticipation

Before children can have expectations and infer outcomes, they MUST have imagination. Fear and failure often precede pleasure and success. Kids can live through an event before it actually happens, by pretending.

Playing doctor is universally popular because it breaks down the fear of the unknown or being overpowered into manageable parts. The child playing doctor has the control; the child playing the patient also has control in fantasy. Likewise, a trip to the playground may mean having to encounter the gruff dog down the street. By pretending, the child is able to face the good, the bad and the ugly and prepare for all three.

A child can anticipate what will happen by mirroring the real situation and is able to control expectations because she is the writer, actor and director all in one. As children mature, they live more and more in the future. They are able to delay gratification, set goals and define their expectations through dramatic play.

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Dramatic Play - Disappointments, Change, and Empathy

Disappointments and Change
Changes in plans or routines may be devastating to children. They thrive on routine, and when it is interrupted they may fall apart. Prociessing out disappointment and change through dramatic play helps ease the stress.

Empathy
The development of joint purpose and cooperation that dramatic play affords children is a jupstart for their social skills and sense of empathy. Sibling who pretend together are more cooperative and better at negotiation. They tend to discuss thoughts and feelings more frequently.

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Dramatic Play - Bonding and Daydreams

Bonding - 
Children often form or maintain relationships best through dramatic play, especially if they have siblings of different ages. Often siblings will tolerate one another only in make-believe and not in realism. Babyish behavior - a source of irritation to an older child - will be encouraged if the younger child plays the baby's role and that "baby" will cheerfully abide limitations and without resentments when being babyish is the expected, required behavior.

Daydreams and Fantasies -
When children leave the preschool years, their imagination begins to work in daydreams and fantasies, which continue throughout the rest of their lives. Daydreams and fantasies are used for escape, vicarious thrills, revenge, wish fulfillment, even for brainstorming and inventiveness... and they continue throughout life.

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Aggression and Hostility

Children will express any conflicts and irritations they  feel and make them more manageable through dramatic play. Adults are often shocked at the drastic measures and verbiage to which children resort to express their hostile feelings. Dolls are a primary focus for coming to grips with negative feelings and being in power. The challenge of adjusting to a new sibling is often lightened when feelings - both acceptable and unacceptable - can be taken out on a doll. Anger can be released safely.

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Play That Has Meaning is Sure to be Repeated

The roots of pro-social behavior such as nurturing, caring and sharing (better expressed as "taking turns") begin in pretend play as children practice affection and sympathy. Their expressions of anti-social behaviors like physical aggression, verbal abusiveness, and violence also play a valid part in make-believe.

Children need to, and will, be flexible in their pretend play to manipulate concepts they are just beginning to grasp.

Children will repeat actions and dialog over and over with or without modifications. They may act out something unfamiliar to cope with their fear and anxiety to gain more understanding and release negative energy, or they may relive very familiar joys and pleasures and release positive energy. Kids need to repeat situations again and again to minimize the accompanying negative or positive stresses. Kids will often exaggerate their roles. When playing "baby" they can express jealous feelings safely, and still recognize how much better it is to be the older sibling. This is their way of interpreting the known and unknown environments and trying out what they think is versus what really is.

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Categories and Forms of Pretending

As pretending increases in a child's life, the subject matter  changes. The three categories most often displayed are:

• Personification (speaking to and for dolls, stuffed toys, inanimate objects)
• Imaginative Use of Materials (drinking out of a cup, shaving, carrying a purse)
• Participation in Make-Believe Situations (visiting the doctor, keeping house, putting out fires)

All Children like stories about animals, boys like adventures, girls enjoy home life and domestic happenings.

There are many forms of pretending - each has its own value:

• Talking to self/monologue/stream of consciousness
• Informal, spontaneous dialog between two people
• Extemporaneous role-playing, alone or cooperatively
• Solo performance or pretending alone
• Pantomime of a well-known story
• Dramatization of a storybook with or without a supporting cast
• Improvised skit
• Role-playing
• Scripted play
• Factual re-enactment
• Group collaboration

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