Children learn best when they’re interested and having fun! Child led play gives your child the space to explore their environment. It also lets you meet your child at their level in their speech and language development.
Child led play is following your childs lead rather than having your own plan when playing together. It’s about tuning into your child’s interest and communication cues, then responding in a way that acknowledges your child.
This post will delve into how child led play helps early childhood development, particularly your child’s speech and language development. It will share a common misconception, things to consider when playing with your child, and how to follow your child’s lead in playful interactions.
Play & Early Childhood Development
Play creates an opportunity for your child to discover their interests, learn about the world around them and explore their curiosities. It plays a fundamental role in your child’s early childhood development and their experiences. Play helps:
- – Your child’s attention
- – Their creativity and imagination
- – Create a space for regulation and exploring their feelings
- – Build confidence and independence
- – Develop their motor skills and co-ordination
- – Build connections with others
- – Their understanding and learning of how things work
- – Your child link language to their environment
Child Led Play & Speech and Language Development
While it may look like your speech and language therapist is “just playing” in sessions, there are a multitude of speech and language targets that they’re focusing on.
Through play, your child learns to link language to items, their actions, requests, curiosity, learning, feeling and much more. Therefore, the focus in child led play could be a specific communication purpose, single words, concepts, building sentences, scripted phrases, or creating stories, to name a few.
Play allows for these targets to be modelled naturally and in an activity that is meaningful and interesting for your child. It helps with building trust, which creates a space for your child to express themselves!
A Common Misconception about Child Led Play
Child led play and following your childs lead does not mean letting them do whatever they want whenever they want. Setting some limits particularly when it comes to your child’s safety is of course very important.
Rather, following your childs lead shifts the focus to meeting your child where they’re at with an activity they enjoy or are curious about. It moves away from having a specific idea of how your child should play or how an activity needs to be completed.
It’s about being present, attentive and responsive to your child’s communication but also letting them have the freedom to explore their learning, share their own ideas, and build connections.
Consider These Things When Engaging in Child Led Play
Here are a few things to think about when engaging in child led play:
Thinking about Their Play Environment
Freedom to Explore
Consider the environment your child is playing in. This might be thinking about how to set up a safe environment that creates opportunities for your child to explore freely and show you what they’re interested in.
For example, what activities and tools can your child use without too much direction from you? This allows your child to focus on the language heard and/or seen in the activity.
Movement and Sensory Preferences
Have you included movement and your child’s sensory preferences? This could be jumping up in excitement, running around the room between activities, or including toys with lights or spinning parts.
Movement and sensory preferences play an important role in helping your child feel regulated. It helps your child shift their focus from their body to their play, interactions and language.
Honouring All Play Types
There are many different types of play including cause and effects, rough and tumble, construction, imaginative, pretend, sensory and role play.
There are also many ways to play. Honouring how your child plays by following your childs lead, copying their play and/or acknowledging them shows your child that their experience and thoughts are valued.
Following Your Childs Lead
Following your childs lead is a fundamental component to child led play. It helps you find where your child is at when it comes to their speech and language development. Here’s how to follow your their lead.
1 – Join Your Child at Their Level
Getting down on your little one’s level and spending time face-to-face helps your see their facial expressions, reactions, movement, sounds/words/phrases, and more. Rather than sitting on a chair, move to the floor next to your child. Rather than standing up, crouch down to where they can see you.
Joining your child at their level also means focusing on their strengths and where they are in their speech and language development.
2 – Take Time to Observe and Listen
Pause to give your child time to show you what they’re interested in. Notice what your child is doing, like:
- – What they’re playing with
- – What they’re looking at
- – How they’re playing with it
- – What gestures or facial expressions they’re using
Pausing gives your child time to process any language you’ve modelled and join in if they want to. It also creates an opportunity for you to listen to your child’s response, like:
- – What sounds, words, phrases they’re saying
- – Are they laughing, squealing or babbling
3 – Be a Play Partner rather than a Play Director
It’s easy to shift into directing your child’s play by showing or telling them what to do or asking questions to start or keep an interaction going. In child led play, the focus shifts to taking a step back by going with the flow, following your childs lead, and letting go of your plan.
While there are moments in play interactions where you may suggest an idea or your child might need help, it’s important to balance those moments by pausing and creating opportunities for your child to come up with their own ideas.
Including fun words like “crash” “yay” “quack quack” “beep beep” can help with keeping the interaction playful and fun too!
4 – Responding to Your Child’s Communication Cues
Responding to your child’s communication keeps the interaction going and lets them know they’ve been heard. This helps build your child’s confidence in their speech and language development.
Here are some ways to keep the interaction going:
Copy: Imitating helps your child’s speech and language development. They learn this concept by seeing and hearing you copy them! You could try:
- – Copying the sounds, words, phrases they say
- – Copying their facial expressions, gestures and actions (e.g., smiling)
- – Copying your child’s play by getting your own toy and copying their actions (e.g., pushing the train, giving dolly a drink)
Acknowledge: Acknowledging your child’s communication lets them know they’ve been heard and what they’ve communicated is valued and understood. This could be repeating what your little one’s said, agreeing (e.g., “yeah” “mmhmm”), adding a comment, smiling, changing your intonation, etc.
Interpret: Become a detective by figuring out what your child’s sounds, words, phrases, facial expressions, gestures and actions might mean. Model language that you think they might need.
Comment and Narrate: Instead of asking lots of questions, try adding a comment naturally. This could be about your child’s interest, your actions, your little one’s actions, the environment or for a communication purpose (i.e., reasons why we communicate). This helps with reducing the pressure and keeps play fun!
Expand: If your child learns language word by word (analytic language processor), expand on what your child says. For example, if your child says a word like “car”, model back “yes a big car”. If your child says a few words together like “bird up”, model back “yes, the birds up there”.
Expand your child’s play by suggesting an idea. Pause for your child’s response and follow their lead even if they don’t follow your idea.
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