“As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all the developed functions in a condensed form.
A child’s greatest achievements are possible in play, achievements that tomorrow will become his basic level of real action and morality.
It is the essence of play that a new relation is created…between situations in thought and real situations.” – Zev Vygotsky
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Children with developmental delays often live isolated and lonely lives. Their challenges, whether in communication, sensory regulation, motor coordination, cognitive understanding or emotional responsiveness and regulation and socialization often exclude them from the pleasure and benefit of playing with others.
Learning how to play specific games and activities can become a bridge to interpersonal connection, to joy and to learning itself.
Play has often been regarded as trivial, even wasteful. Parents, teachers and therapists anxious for the child to “progress,” to master letters and numbers and proper behaviors may regard play as a distraction rather than one of its early and essential forms of learning.
Dismissing play as unproductive and unimportant misunderstands the development of the mind of a child.
Young children learn through engagement with things, with people, with possibilities. A stick becomes a horse, a box becomes a house, a thumb becomes a nose. The child’s feelings and thinking take shape in these transformations. Games and interactive play activities are not foolishness. They have purpose, intention, meaning and rules.
Play and games offer the child lessons and examples of real life: order, sequence, effort, turn-taking, understanding other minds, planning, remembering, experimenting, fairness, patience, cooperation, and fun. Play expands the growing mind, bringing together emotion, communication, imagination, problem-solving, and friendship.
Conundrum
Children acquire many of the fundamental prerequisites of learning through play. But children with developmental delays learn meaningful play after they have acquired the fundamentals of learning. So, we need to help children learn how to play so they can learn how to learn.
Learning how to play takes time. Many aspects of play are not automatic, smooth and carefree. Turn-taking, rule-following, imagination and pretending slowly unfold with the learning of necessary prerequisites, with mediated support and encouragement and with repeated opportunity.
Children with significant developmental delays learn how to play when they connect deeply with a mediator, a parent, caregiver, an attentive therapist or teacher. Basic, enjoyable, playful interactions and activities motivate interest and participation, which foster the foundations of exploration and playful interactions with other people, with objects, with feelings, and with ideas.
Mediated activities might start with simple behaviors, imitating actions, blowing bubbles, pat-a-cake, hide and seek, and tag. Later, with more imaginative activities like a tea party, a space adventure, and a birthday celebration. And with popular, simple interactive thinking games, such as tic-tac-toe, dominoes, Connect Four, and checkers.
Learn to Play Activities and Games Popular with Other Children
The games and activities learned and rehearsed should be played and well-liked by children in the child’s family and community so that the play skills learned with an adult mediator can be transferred to interactive peer and sibling play activities.
The adult mediator plays with the child, mediating the activities and instructing the child on necessary prerequisites for specific play activities which involve all of the child’s interactive developmental domains: emotion/motivation/empathy, interest/attention/understanding/memory/imagination, sensory/motor, communication/verbal and non-verbal, social/interpersonal/empathy/rules of interaction.
During early mediated play with intentioned adults the child learns the skills and the steps involved in a play activity and the purpose, intention, goals, strategies and the intrinsic enjoyment of the repeated activity, in mental, physical and communicational interactions during interpersonal play activities.
As the child becomes increasingly familiar with the necessary mental, physical and communicational activities involved in a specific play activity, they become more knowledgeable, more skillful, more confident and more willing to participate.
When the child has been thoroughly prepared and has acquired the specific emotional, social, cognitive and motor skills with a trusted and encouraging adult mediator, they are more able to anticipate specific patterns and begin enjoying the activity and interpersonal interactions.
When the child has learned and successfully practiced a specific familiar play activity or game with a mediator, one or two children are carefully selected to join the child and the adult mediator in the pre-learned and thoroughly role-played, game or play activity.
I invite potential peer play partners who are playful, kind, patient, and tolerant to join us. Sometimes I select children with developmental delays and sometimes typically developing children to join the newly developing child and me for the play activity.
The adult remains an anchor in the play, good-humoredly instructing and organizing the rules and interactions, pacing the flow, keeping things moving, possibly smoothing over small differences of opinion.
Sibling Play Partners
Something remarkable often takes place in these small and carefully managed play interactions. Peers and siblings, possibly for the first time, are able to play an interesting activity with someone they thought would never be a play partner for them.
Siblings and peers witness the child’s ability, their successful interpersonal interactions, and notice their commonalities with them and the other play partners, not only differences. A new social identity is born for the child with special needs, one that involves respect and belonging.
“I Did Not Know He Could Do That”
Siblings are often astonished. “I didn’t know he could do that.” This shift in perception is invaluable for the sibling and for the child with delays. To be accepted and appreciated, to be part of a play group, to feel valued and to enjoy together helps children to grow and to enjoy life.
Interactive play with peers and siblings has been elusive for many of these children. Unfamiliarity with the activity or game, confusion, learning difficulties and slowness, social misunderstandings, sensory overload, fear of being misunderstood, of being judged or rejected all inhibit spontaneous engagement.
Lack of belief in the child and overprotectiveness, though well-meaning, can also stifle opportunities to engage and to learn through doing. Adult supervision, if too rigid, too close, or too constant may restrict opportunities, inhibit the child’s confidence or enthusiasm, or may alienate other children and constrain authentic interactions.
Play is not merely recreation. It is a rehearsal for life. When introduced thoughtfully, it becomes a source of discovery, not only for the child but for everyone around them.
Unlike adult-child relationships, which often emphasize care and correction, sibling interactions and relationships can be highly intuitive, empathic, spontaneous and authentic. Their interactions are truer to real-life peer experiences. Siblings wrestle, chase, share jokes, build imaginary worlds, offer support and protection from others and do not shy away from setting boundaries and limits. Through sibling play interactions, the child with special needs encounters new dimensions of social learning, reciprocity, flexibility, humor and even healthy competition.
Fuller Participation in Life
In the long term, these learned interpersonal play skills spread outward. The child becomes more likely to be invited to birthday parties, to be included at recess, to join group activities.
Social inclusion creates further development. Language and communication improve, coordination and motor skills advance, and social bonding and emotional regulation become more stable. Learning activities can become more playful and rewarding, problem-solving becomes more successful and rewarding, confidence grows. Through successful interactive play, isolated children begin to emerge into fuller participation in life.
Frequent, successful and enjoyable interpersonal play is not a luxury. It is not extra. It is foundational.
Copyright © 2025 Shlomo Chaim
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