Child-led Play

Child-led play is a central focus in the therapeutic model here at Under the Umbrella. Here’s why:

Letting your child or your client decide on play activities and ideas fosters the most authentic and functional language use in kids. Child-led play strengthens the bonds between children and their grownups. Kids who lead the play start conversations and build reciprocal interactions. The Hanen Centre, a major source of research and information about early childhood language and play uses the phrase “Children who lead get the language they need”. (http://www.hanen.org/Home.aspx)

Following the child’s lead means responding with interest to what the young person is communicating. This can be done in lots of ways. Getting down on the ground and being face to face offers a chance to connect more easily and share play and language. It’s just more fun to be face and face and hear and see each other better.

Waiting and letting the child choose and guide the play offers a glimpse into what interests and passions drive the child. It allows the adult play partner to slow down and observe and tune into the unique delights that occupy the child.

Tempo and pace are important aspects of child-led play. Thoughts of productivity or education or learning should be set aside during child-led play. Heretical as that might sound, it has been shown and demonstrated and researched that child-led play must be without agenda, without pre-determined outcome. Play is the work. The work is play. It is in this particular mind-set that the interactions become more meaningful, the language more advanced, the relationship to the world more engaged and deep. Because the child is leading the play into their own territory of interest, their attention is harnessed and the child is available to their best learning. This does not mean that the play is random or accidental or that goals in therapy are jettisoned or abandoned. Goals are embedded into the play, allowing for therapist or parent to be totally present, not only to the play but to the process of development. Play and goal are one. Lev Vygotsky (developmental child psychologist, 1896-1934) famously claimed “In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself” (https://loisholzman.org/2011/10/vygotskys-head-taller-metaphor-for-play/)

We can borrow some language from the world of the theater by describing child-led play as the chance for children (and grownups for that matter) to create new performances of themselves—they are the writers, directors and actors in the play and the encounters. They are creating culture, showing us what they believe in and what they value. We get to participate in the culture of their own particular, eclectic, individual response to the world as they experience it.

When we substitute outcome for process and result for culture, we allow ourselves to be nimble in the work of communication therapy. We can pivot, we can be improvisational, we can respond, with integrity and ease to the perspective of the child; engage in their process, enter their culture, honor their values, be available to the presence of each child in the unique aspects of their understanding and depth.

This is what we enter into when we engage with young people in child-led play. We open worlds and entertain ideas. And allow the young people in our care, even those with significant or meaningful delays in communication, to be taller than themselves.