Understanding the Early Phases of Your Child’s Play and Language Development
Did you know that a trained eye can predict the way a child is communicating by observing their play skills, and vice versa?
Childhood is a magical time marked by rapid growth and discovery, especially in areas like play and language development. We might not put much thought into the development of what appears to be such a natural part of childhood, but when children need a little support moving through these key stages, it raises the question: How does this all work? Here is where we come in! Understanding these early phases is crucial for parents and caregivers to support their child's development in a holistic fashion. Let's delve into how play and language intertwine during these formative years.
What is Important to Understand About Play Development?
To quote an educator with a lot of street cred: “Play is the work of the child” - Maria Montessori.
Play is not merely a pastime for children; it's their primary mode of learning and exploration.
Through play, children develop crucial cognitive and social skills which lay the foundation for language and verbal communication.
Let’s explore the types of play development, and what skills they are facilitating behind the scenes:
1. Sensorimotor Play (0-2 years):
Description: Babies and toddlers explore the world through their senses and physical actions.
Key Activities: Grasping objects, mouthing toys, shaking rattles, exploring textures.
Developmental Goals: Developing motor skills, understanding cause-and-effect, sensory integration.
Relationship to Language: Cause-and-effect is the cognitive foundation to communication. It teaches babies that when they do something, something specific happens. For instance,
When I shake mommy’s container of mints they make a fun sound!
When I throw my spoon, daddy picks it up- control!
Language is also cause-and-effect:
When I say “baba” my bottle appears; When I say “my shoe” my grandma picks out the right ones for me.
2. Symbolic Play (2-4 years):
Description: Children begin to use objects to represent other things and engage in pretend play.
Key Activities: Role-playing, using toys creatively, imitating adult behaviors.
Developmental Goals: Enhancing imagination, practicing social roles, early problem-solving.
Relationship to Language:
Playing with a wider variety of toys, or objects facilitates vocabulary growth. For young children, words represent toys, just as toys represent actions in pretend play (e.g., the word “spoon” represents a Spoon, which in turn represents stirring, cooking, or eating in play).
Interestingly, when a child uses two objects together in play (a hammer and a block; a hairbrush and a baby doll), they are beginning to combine two words together in speech.
As children learn to play with their toys in new ways, their brains apply those creative processes to forming the right kind of sentence to get their messages across.
3. Cooperative Play (4-7 years):
Description: Children start playing with others, learning to cooperate, and following rules.
Key Activities: Group games, make-believe scenarios with peers, structured activities.
Developmental Goals: Understanding social norms, empathy, teamwork.
Relationship to Language:
Play is getting more complex. Kids have the building blocks (apologies for the pun) with vocabulary and basic sentence structures; but now they put it to use with others.
Coordinating games with peers fosters conversational skills, while generating make-believe scenarios bridges from basic sentence-length productions to richer and well organized story-telling.
What is Important to Understand About Language Development?
We now know how play supports language development, but language development is granular in its own way, with several distinct stages. Each one builds on the other to develop fully effective communication skills and there are specific toys and games which help that along.
Let’s explore the phases of language development, and how they are seen in play:
1. Pre-linguistic Stage (0-12 months):
Description: Babies communicate through cries, gestures, and facial expressions.
Key Milestones: Babbling, imitating sounds, responding to simple instructions.
Developmental Goals: Understanding basic language cues, developing listening skills
Supporting Play Activities:
Peek-a-boo
Bubbles
Interacting with flap books
Using cause-and-effect toys (think: jack-in-the box, but maybe less scary)
Babbling while crawling after a ball.
2. One-Two Word Stage (12-18 months):
Description: Children begin using single words to convey whole sentences' meanings.
Key Milestones: Saying first words (e.g., "mama," "ball"), understanding simple questions.
Developmental Goals: Vocabulary expansion, basic understanding of to build sentences
Supporting Play Activities:
rolly-polly with a big ball
games that involve filling up a container with toys or blocks then dumping them out…and doing it all over again..and again…and
finger painting
play with objects that represent people or animals (e.g., a basic farm set)
3. Basic Phrase Stage (18-24 months):
Description: Toddlers combine two or more words to form short sentences.
Key Milestones: Using simple phrases (e.g., "want cookie," "big doggie"), following more complex instructions.
Developmental Goals: Grammar development, basic sentence construction.
Supporting Play Activities:
Simple board puzzles
Caring for a baby doll or pet with another object such as a brush or a bottle
Building a block tower
Using “tools” to fix other toys, or similarly using “cooking utensils” to stir and cut
4. Multi-Word Stage (3 + years)
Description: Toddlers and young children speak in expanding sentences and begin to tell stories
Key Milestones: Incorporating pronouns (I, me, you) and grammar forms other than nouns and verbs, such as: and, the, is, are etc.
Developmental Goals: Perfecting grammar and sentence structuring; expanding vocabulary, telling stories
Supporting Play Activities:
more elaborate pretend play games with things like kitchen and tool sets
using more sophisticated building materials (e.g., magnatiles, or lego), and adding meaning to structures (“it’s a water slide!”)
playing imaginary games with other children that require some turn-taking and coordination (e.g., “let’s play dinosaurs…you run, and I’m going to catch you”)
How Does Speech Therapy Help Play and Language Development?
The term “play-based” in the realm of childhood therapies and education is ubiquitous for a reason- one which you are now privy to. Therapeutic play is the way we close developmental language gaps and help young children begin to talk if they are not doing so at the right time.
In therapy we use these trained eyes of ours to assess your child’s communication level and design play programming to get them climbing higher. As your child’s favorite playmate, you are pivotal in this process, so we aim to give you all the tools you need to create developmentally supportive play opportunities in your home. If concerns about your child’s communication and/or play lead you to working with us, we will sit criss-cross with you on your rug, and get to “work”.
