Play is vitally important to children\u2019s development, and playing together is one of the first ways children start to build social skills that they\u2019ll use for the rest of their lives. More than that, though, as anyone who has ever been a kid knows, playing together is how toddlers and children make their first friendships.<\/p>\n
Since most parents were, at some point, children, and know this well, many parents find themselves a little bit concerned by their children\u2019s earliest play dates, where neither of the young play-daters seem too interested in interacting with each other. This early lack of interest is a normal developmental step along the way to social behavior, though, and a few years down the line, most of those quiet, solitary players will be hard to drag away from their friends when it\u2019s time to head home from the park.<\/p>\n
For the very first playdates, Baby<\/span> probably won’t even realize their<\/span> friends are there. Closer to preschool age, they will<\/span> probably start interacting closely and collaboratively with their<\/span> little buddies. But in between these two stages of play, there\u2019s a halfway stage that involves children playing near each other, and even in some of the same ways, without quite playing with <\/em>each other.<\/p>\n Parallel play that starts as disinterest and develops into friendly side-by-side play, often in the same kind of game, or with the same types of toys or tools, usually starts to develop around 2 years old. This generally starts to show at around the same time that toddlers start to show an interest in other children. They don\u2019t have the skills, or the inclination, for more cooperative play yet, but the interest that draws them to play near each other means they\u2019re well on their way.<\/p>\n During the parallel play phase, toddlers build the skills they\u2019ll need to move on to the next phase: cooperative play. These skills include turn-taking, sharing, empathy, and language skills, all of which are the building blocks that relationships are built upon far into the future.<\/p>\n Parallel play is sort of a training-wheels stage for Baby<\/span> on their<\/span> way to playing with other children. As Baby<\/span>\u2019s interest in other children grows, growing skills for playing nicely together will only help them<\/span> out.<\/p>\n Parallel play isn’t the toddler version of synchronized swimming, but rather a transitional stage in the development of friendships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235693,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ovia_author_name":"","ovia_author_prefix":"","ovia_author_image":"","ovia_content_type_id":"177","ovia_product_mode":"13","ovia_days_from_signup":"","ovia_days_from_lmp":"","ovia_days_from_baby_birth":"565","ovia_days_from_enroll":"","ovia_health_module_days_from":"","ovia_article_for_email_days_from":"565","ovia_health_module":"","ovia_legacy_id2":"","ovia_ttc":"","ovia_article_subtype":"","ovia_health_symptom":"","ovia_partner_id":"","ovia_partner_custom_group":"","ovia_legacy_category":"9","ovia_legacy_category2":"240","ovia_content_url_id":"101311","ovia_include_share_buttons":"","ovia_fertility_goal":"","ovia_secondary_module":"","ovia_trimester":"","ovia_child_age":"","ovia_share_image":"","ovia_more_menu_image":"","ovia_button1_url":"","ovia_days_from_postpartum":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"fert-category":[],"preg-category":[],"parent-category":[112,115,116],"fert-tag":[],"preg-tag":[],"parent-tag":[438],"class_list":["post-101311","article","type-article","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","parent-category-babys-development-and-growth","parent-category-language-and-communication-development","parent-category-social-and-emotional-development","parent-tag-baby-games-to-play"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat is parallel play?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Helping Baby<\/span> build the skills for cooperative play<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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