What You Need to Know About Playing And Learning to Babies

Play is much more than “just fun” to babies. Play is discovering what they can do and practicing doing it, finding out about things and exploring what they find. At this age-stage play can be anything which stimulates babies to use their bodies, their senses and their emotions, to develop their thinking, their understanding and their intelligence. So while play must be fun (or the baby will not do it), not all play has to be deliberate fun. Provided the adult who is taking care of him has enough time, patience and good cheer, your baby can get some play value out of every single ordinarily pleasant happening in his day, from having his diaper changed to being fed lunch.

Being deliberately played with is very important to babies, though. Older children may long for you to play with them and love it when you do, but they can play without an adult in a way that your baby cannot. In fact, for the next year or so the distinction between “playing” and “learning” that will be so important when he is older will scarcely exist, and neither will the matching distinction between an adult playing with him and teaching him. When you or another adult caregiver set out to play with your baby, you can’t help but be teaching him because he can do so little for, or by, himself and has everything to learn. He’d probably like an adult to play with him whenever he’s awake but the time any of you can spend one-on-one with him, and without anything else you have to (try to) get done simultaneously, is probably limited. So it is worth making sure that the time you spend with him is used for the most appropriate, and therefore interesting and enjoyable, kinds of play you can possibly think up.   

Adjust kinds of play to your baby’s moods. Like everybody else he enjoys different things when he is in different moods, but unlike most older people his moods can change in a moment.

When he is feeling tough and good, he enjoys rough and tumble play. It makes him triumph in his body and, gradually, in his own control and power cover it. But when he is feeling tired or unwell, the same games frighten and upset him. He does not feel in control and powerful now; he feels manhandled. When he is feeling quiet and affectionate, he revels in being rocked and crooned to. But when he is feeling restless and energetic, the same games make him feel imprisoned. When he is tired or hungry or miserable, no game including free Barbie dress up games is any good. He does not want your play – he wants bed or food of comfort.

Being a playmate means adjusting your timing to the baby’s. His reactions are much slower than yours, especially when the play that you are offering stretches new abilities up to and beyond their limits. If he is to take his full share in the “Barbie dress up and makeover games”, you must train yourself to play his pace. If you speak to him, for example, wait five seconds for him to “answer” and then get impatient and say something else, you have done him out of his turn. Wait. It may take him fifteen seconds to find his answering sound.