Encourage Role Plays for your Child’s Development
10-04-2015 | Posted By: Admin | 1688 View(s)
When children play, they take on different roles all the time which we call as ROLE PLAY. Role Plays/ Pretend Play is not just a product of a child’s imagination or his way of mimicking others as what most of us commonly think of. There is a lot more to it which we need to understand.
When a child is mimicking as a doctor in his play, he is learning how to help and take care of others, when he is a teacher, he understands how to manage a group and the way to address or monitor the people around. A child imitating her mother is not just copying her steps, she is learning how to look after everyone and be responsible.
These can be a lot of examples; however “Role Play” in brief helps in the social and intellectual development of a child.
Imagination is a powerful tool, and we should help and encourage children with the opportunity to develop it in the right way. Even the preschools these days have included “ROLE PLAY “as one of the essential parts of their syllabus or activities list.
Assigning different roles and acting them out helps children improve their verbal and non-verbal communication skills and also helps them to develop skills required to socialise and co-operate with others There is yet another face of it, wherein by copying and speaking different words they have heard others saying, they are building their vocabulary and language skills.
Haven’t you observed a couple of times, when the child speaks some words which leave us amazed as to how have they learnt such big and difficult words, which we have not taught them at all? There you are! ROLEPLAYS and copying others is the reason. By playing different roles in a group, they also learn how to listen to what others are saying and the way they have to respond in an appropriate manner.
Role Play is, therefore, an effective way for children to make sense of the world around them. Setting up a kitchen, doctor’s room, supermarket or a classroom will allow children to explore these real-life situations.
Key Benefits of Role Plays can be listed as follows:
-Social skills development in a child
-Develops communication and language skills
-Encourages the participation of a child as per their imagination.
-Teaches children how to express their feelings and ideas in a better way.
-Helps a child to make sense of real-life situations
Though we completely agree that a child should not copy or imitate each and everything they watch in their surroundings, however, it is the duty of parents only to keep a check on it, not by discouraging them or prohibiting them from these plays but by moulding them and taking them in the right direction and turning it into something beneficial for the child.
For this, it would be better for all the parents and teachers to encourage them to participate in such games. The parents and teachers should also be a part of this as participation can help you in understanding the child better.
