Of Fairy Wings and Princess Hair Clips: How Playing Dress-Up Helps Your Child
Of Fairy Wings and Princess Hair Clips: How Playing Dress-Up Helps Your Child
We all love children for their rich imaginations. Just try watching them play dress-up: they can be a princess, a fairy, a pirate, or a superhero. Once they get into it, their imaginations transform them into whatever they want to be, and transport them wherever they want to go.
Before you know it, your darling daughter is donning her frilly pink dress, her flower hair clips, and perhaps your favorite pumps that are way too big for her, pretending that she is the fairy of the forest. While it may seem like just another cute moment to you, when your child dons those fairy wings and glittery hair accessories, she is actually developing in ways beyond this dress-up.
According to child psychologists, dress-up play is vital to a child's development. It fosters a child's imaginative processes and allows for experimentation and fantasy. It also gives you a peek intoyour child's mind and can reveal possible inner conflicts, depending on the role that your child plays and how she expresses it.
For Dr. Keith Kanner, licensed clinical child, adolescent, and adult psychologist, "Play is symbolic of and used for psychological growth and is the child's way of practicing new ways of understanding their minds, relationships, and the world around them." Additionally, you can observe three new developmental themes in dress-up play: the identification of gender roles, the growing and changing of interpersonal relationships, and the development of conscience.
Gender identification, for example, may be displayed by a little girl putting on her pretty hair accessories and dressing up as a princess, or borrowing grown-up clothes from your closet and pretending to be a school teacher. Since children are very impressionable, they are most likely to mimic their parents. The development of personal relationships may be displayed when your child "plays house" with her friends, where they each play multiple roles. For example, as husband and wife, and also mother and father. As for the development of conscience, observe when your child's dress-up play has rules by which she has to abide. This will demonstrate your child's conscience in formation.
You can promote your child's development by encouraging dress-up play. Simply create an instant wardrobe for your imaginative little tot! Here are several items that you may already have at hand and won't have you running to different clothes stores or baby boutiques.
A bath towel can become a cape, a turban, or table cloth.
A flimsy skirt can become a fancy dress or a bride's veil.
Hair accessories of all kinds can help make important accents.
For the little man of the house, a tool belt can be a holster.
For the glamorous little girl, sunglasses can add extra glitz and sparkly beads can be used as jewelry.
And go ahead, bring out the Halloween costumes!
So think twice before throwing out old clothes, hair accessories or even baby gifts that you no longer use. They may have served their purpose for you, but in your child's eyes, they may be treasure troves of new adventures. Importantly, they might even help her become a unique, confident, and well-balanced adult. Truth about Migraines in Children Science Experiments For Kids Buy Your Child A Beautiful And Distinctive Watch For Christmas Parents celebrate when children head to student accommodation Parenting Young Children Can Be An Arduous Thing If You Are Not Capable For Anything And Everything! Visit Beaches Suitable For Children In Central Algarve Recommended Backyard Activities For Teenagerss Skin Tightening After Childbirth TOYS FOR BOYS: CHOOSE THEM WITH CARE Boomboxes: Its The Best Thing To Give Your Child As A Gift Why It Is Important to Teach Children Acceptance About Differences in Other People Ways To Help Children Cope With Disability Leveling The Playing Field For Disabled Children