The Power of Role Playing Continued
One of the most powerful tools I have found in both my parenting journey and my professional role as an Early Years Consultant is that of role play. In my last blog post, I talked of the richness of learning that is experienced during creative role play and the impact this has on a child’s development. This time I would like to discuss the use of role play as a tool to support emotional preparation for upcoming change. In this scenario role play is used in a more directed way, it has a specific goal and a more structured story line. Over the past few months, we have been using role play to help emotionally prepare our daughter to incorporate daddy into more of her daily routines.
Our daughter has always found great comfort at the breast and as a result it has been much easier for myself and my partner to assign more of the running of the household to my partner and for myself to do most of the childcare, bedtimes, night feeds, nap times etc. However, my daughter has just turned two and we have begun to drop feeds and her cognitive understanding is developing so we would like to start to transition to a more balanced approach across the two areas. Our little girl is wonderfully strong willed and assertive. She has strong parental preferences around bedtime and naptime and isn’t a particular fan of change so we have used her love of small world, dolls houses and stories to slowly prepare her for this change.
The first story we began to act out was daddy putting her to bed. We spent time playing in her dolls house using this type of script given below. I would take the lead with her the wooden figures from the dolls house and direct the story incorporating her ideas as we meandered through the general idea.
Where it says daughter in the script it is not my daughter saying this but the wooden figurine daughter I am using in the play scenario.
Daughter: Morning mummy is it breakfast time?
Mummy: Yes beautiful - I wonder, would we like cereal or toast and eggs this morning?
(I pause here and let her choose what the character would like. She loves hearing her ideas in the script)
Daughter: Yummy eggs! Can I help scramble them?
Mummy: Of course let’s crack the eggs into the pan. Today’s an exciting day because tonight daddy’s going to be putting you to bed - he’s going to play in the bath with you, put your pajamas on and read special stories. I wonder what daddy might play with you in the bath tonight?
(My daughter loves joining in with an enthusiastic script that is rooted in familiarity with her life. She will normally choose her current favourites to add into the story – for example she will say – oo daddy play bubbles)
Mummy: Now we’ve finished breakfast let’s get dressed and head to the play park to see your special friend D and his Mummy.
At the small world play park- I use a toy car and put the figurines in it to pretend to go to the park.
Daughter: Hi D! Let’s play on the swings.
Friend: I love the swings - wee - let’s go so high we touch the sky.
Daughter: Today’s a special day D - my daddy is going to read me stories and help me go to sleep tonight.
Friend: My daddy reads me stories and snuggles in my bed too and I fall asleep next to him.
(This particular friends dad is very familiar to my daughter and she will gain comfort from knowing this)
Daughter: Let’s go on the slide.
Friend: It’s quite high up.
Daughter: It’s okay I’ll help you.
Friend: I’m getting tired - let’s go and have a snack and then have nap time.
And so the script continues! It sounds mundane and moves through ideas quickly but I have found the most effective way of maintaining engagement and enthusiasm is to interweave new ideas in with a very familiar story line of our day and my daughter’s experiences. These familiar conversations are interspersed with new ideas but in a container of safety of the things she loves and understands. I like to begin these type of role plays and scripts a few weeks before a change. This allows us to play with the new scenario and for her to build up some comfort and safety around the change.
My daughter loves to join in with the role play and occasionally if there is something she is resistant to about the change she will add in her own bits of the storyline to show these fears and worries. Within the story about bedtime she added in the phrase ‘oh mummy back mummy do bedtime now’. I use this as communication from her of her emotional world and adapt the script then as follows:
Friend: Sometimes I really miss my mummy when daddy puts me to bed.
Daughter: Me too it makes me feel sad and a little bit worried about where mummy is.
Friend: I just give my daddy a big cuddle and know that mummy will do bedtime tomorrow and we will have lots of cuddles and stories.
This lasted for a few days as she emotionally processed her worries through play and then she no longer interjected with this worry and seemed happy and content with the story line. Furthermore, depending on the upcoming change and what I personally feel will effectively emotionally support my daughter I will adapt whether I start with the role play outlined above where we play through what might happen or the role play of daddy actually putting her to bed and how this might look. However, I always ensure we have done both scenarios before we start to make the change.
Daddy: Wow look outside there’s the moon - it’s time for bath time and bed time.
Daughter: Daddy can we play with my tea set in the bath tonight?
Daddy: Of course I would love a nice up of tea with milk and sugar.
Pretending to run the bath for her dolls and using the same type of language we use about getting undressed, making sure the bath is the right temperature, do they want bubbles etc.
Daughter: My body is getting tired - let’s get out and go into the bedroom and play bouncing.
Daddy: That sounds fun. Time to put our snuggly pajamas on and our sleeping bag.
Daughter: Let’s have 1,2,3,4,5 stories tonight.
Daddy: 5 stories - okay!
Daughter: zzzzz zzzzz
Daddy: Night Night beautiful girl - I love you so much.
We put the characters to bed and say goodnight and then pause and play through to the next familiar thing in her routine so that she has a complete story.
Daughter: Good morning mummy and daddy - let’s go to the play park today!
My daughter is so deeply engaged with these story lines and watches and listens to me with a huge concentration. I use her dolls house and our routines and stories and play to help her explore her feelings around situations. Through role play children learn to become socially competent, self-regulate and develop an emotional tool kit. It’s a wonderful space for children to practice coping strategies for things they are to face in reality. With adult help, children are able to access a more advanced level of this as they process more complex emotional situations. I have found this mixture of using droplets of her life and really emphasizing all the things she is familiar with the most effective tool for helping her prepare for change. My daughter adapted really well to having daddy do more of her routines and talked about it with us a lot. Although it wasn’t her preference to have daddy put her to bed, it wasn’t a change that she found scary or unsettling and helping keep her emotional world secure was really important to us.
We are planning to night wean this next month and so together with stories and role play I will be supporting my daughter emotionally through this huge transition.
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