Your child is having a huge progress with his cognitive skills at this point and his imagination too is getting broader. As a matter of fact, he will soon happily indulge in playing pretend games, Pretend play is not as simple as it may seem. The process of pretending builds skills in many essential developmental areas.
What you need to know
At this age, when your child engages in pretend play, he is actively experimenting with the social and emotional roles of life. When your child pretends to be different characters, he has the experience of “walking in someone else’s shoes,” which helps teach the important moral development skill of empathy. Your child also builds self-esteem when he discovers he can be anything just by pretending.
Pretend play provides your child with a variety of problems to solve. Your child calls upon important cognitive thinking skills that he will use in every aspect of his life, now and forever. Pretend play helps your child understand the power of language. In addition, by pretend playing with others he learns that words give him the means to reenact a story or organize play. This process helps your child to make the connection between spoken and written language- a skill that will later help him learn to read.
