Symbolic play starts in Children as young as 8 months old. They start to recognize the uses of things and would use them. From 18 months onward, children start to pretend play and would take objects and imagine what it could be, for example, using a banana as a phone or building castles with blocks. They start to assign roles to their toys.
As children’s speech ability may not be as developed, play becomes a way for children to express their emotions, thoughts and also process things that had happened. Play is also an important tool for child Psychologists to find out more about the child’s inner world. It is often used with children who have gone through traumatic experiences, anxiety and other mental health conditions.
For example, I have used play to help understand a girl who had selective mutism, it is a condition where due to severe anxiety, she is unable to talk in one setting such as in the school but she is able to speak normally at home. During the play session where she did not talk, through guidance, she showed me through the toys of how she felt in school. She choose the lion and tiger to be her teachers and the elephant and hippopotamus to be her friends. Through her play I understood what was causing the anxiety. The lion and tiger is symbolic of aggression and she felt that her Teachers were fierce and is she afraid of them. The elephant and the hippopotamus are symbolic that she felt very small among her peers as those are big animals that she picked. She chose herself to be the mouse. This was her perception of school which made her very anxious. From her play, i was able to understand the cause of her anxiety and help her with it.
Thus, if you want to find out how your child’s inner world and how he or she feels about you or other areas of his or her life, Play with them.
Ask your child to choose an animal which represents you and you can find out what’s your child thinks about you.
Mine chose a kangaroo.
thankfully