Play Is Social Learning in Action: How Adults Can Support and Sustain It
If you read the last post, you know that play is much more than “children having fun”; it is a powerful form of social learning in action. That post explored how children’s everyday games build communication, empathy, and cooperation.
In this one, we will focus on how adults can nurture and protect those moments so they become lasting tools for social growth. However, while children are naturally wired to play, the environment we create as adults can make or break how effective that play is for social development
Parents, from the way we respond to squabbles over toys to how much free time we allow in the day, our choices shape whether children’s play becomes a rich, cooperative experience or just another rushed activity squeezed between music lessons and dinner.
Play as a Cultural and Social Mirror
Children’s play often reflects the world around them. In pretend play, children imitate the language, attitudes, and roles they observe in their family, school, society, and media.
Think about it: when children play “family,” they’re reenacting what they observe—sometimes with hilarious accuracy (“Now I have to drink my coffee before I drive to work!”) and sometimes in ways that reveal deeper values (“Let’s all take turns being the leader so it’s fair”).
Sociocultural researchers note that pretend play is like a window into children’s understanding of their world, giving adults valuable insight into how cultural norms and social rules are absorbed.¹ The stories children create while playing are often their way of processing and testing those norms.
The Role of Adults in Social Learning Through Play
It can be tempting for adults to jump into a child’s play with “helpful” suggestions (“Why don’t you build it like this?”) or to quickly resolve conflicts (“Just give her the toy so we can move on”). But often, the best thing we can do is hold back.
Our role is not to choreograph play, it’s to create the conditions where meaningful play can flourish:
- Be a facilitator, not a director. Offer materials, space, and time, but let the children decide the rules.
- Model prosocial behavior. When conflicts arise, demonstrate calm negotiation, empathy, and other skills that children can copy.
- Value process over product. The crooked block tower or nonsensical story is just as valuable as the “perfect” one because learning happens in the doing.
Barriers to Social Play
In today’s world, several trends threaten children’s opportunities for deep social play:
- Over-scheduled lives. Structured classes, sports, and homework often leave little unstructured free time.
- Screen time dominance. Too much solo screenplay can limit face-to-face interaction skills.
- Lack of safe play spaces. Safety concerns or limited green space can reduce outdoor group play opportunities.
A large-scale study found that children with less unstructured peer play showed delayed development in negotiation, empathy, and conflict resolution skills.² Simply put: fewer chances to play with others means fewer chances to practise being with others.
The Cardboard Café Story
One rainy afternoon, I visited my niece’s kindergarten classroom. The teacher had set out a pile of large cardboard boxes, paper plates, markers, and scraps of fabric. Within minutes, a group of children decided to create a “Cardboard Café.”
Some became chefs, others waiters, and one insisted on being the “food critic” (complete with a very serious notebook). There were disagreements about the menu (“We can’t serve spaghetti AND tacos!”) and about roles (“I want to be the chef, too!”).
Instead of stepping in, the teacher sat quietly nearby, only asking the occasional open-ended question (“How will customers know what’s on your menu?”). The children worked it out, rotating jobs, making menus, and even adding a “drive-thru” for pretend customers in a hurry.
The beauty of that scene was that both the cardboard creations and the problem-solving, cooperation, and leadership emerged naturally.
Play Beyond Early Childhood
Play does not expire when children start school. It continues to be a rich source of social learning well into adolescence and adulthood:
- School-age children deepen friendships through games with rules, team sports, and creative projects.
- Teens engage in role-play (drama clubs, video games) and collaborative challenges (sports teams, robotics clubs).
- Adults bond over shared leisure activities, board games, trivia nights, hiking groups—still involving turn-taking, cooperation, and communication.
Notice that play is lifelong, reframes it as an essential human activity, not just a childhood pastime.
Supporting Social Play at Home and School
- Protect unstructured time. Schedule play just like any other important activity.
- Offer open-ended materials. Blocks, costumes, art supplies, and natural objects invite creativity and collaboration.
- Encourage mixed-age play. Younger children learn from older peers, while older children practise leadership and empathy.
- Reflect afterward. Chat with children about their play: “How did you decide who was the leader?” or “What was the trickiest problem you solved together?”
Parent Activity: “Neighborhood Game Revival”
Bring back the kind of neighborhood games that used to keep children outside for hours.
- Choose a simple group game—like “Red Light, Green Light,” “Kick the Can,” “There is a Brown Girl in the Ring,” or a scavenger hunt.
- Invite neighborhood children (or cousins, classmates, friends) to play in a safe outdoor or indoor space.
- Let the children adapt the rules as they wish. Adults participate only if invited.
- End with a group reflection. Ask, “What was the funniest part?” or “How did you figure out the new rules?”
This not only revives classic games but also provides children opportunities to negotiate, cooperate, and connect in a safe space.
Finally, when preparing children for the future, we often focus on academics, technology, and structured skills. But the ability to work well with others, to listen, compromise, and collaborate, also determines success.
By protecting and encouraging social play, we are giving children more than fun memories; we are giving them the relational toolkit they will use for the rest of their lives, in classrooms, workplaces, friendships, and families.
Play may look like leisure, but in reality, it’s serious business for growing humans.
Footnotes