strewing to encourage socio-dramatic play
Hey guys, today we’re gonna talk about strewing to encourage socio-dramatic play. Now around the age of one, or as early as the age of one, some babies will begin to pretend that one object symbolizes another, such as holding a banana and pretending it’s a phone. But through toddlerhood, it develops even more. And when they’re about three or four and they’re in the identity phase, and then it actually becomes crucial for them to start adopting different identities and pretending to be different people in different characters. Now sometimes we might think of this as silliness or as we don’t have time for it or it’s embarrassing to us because they wanna wear the Spiderman costume to preschool or they’re making a big mess because they’re taking out our shoes our hats or that using things that we think they’re gonna ruin, like hat, necklaces, et cetera.
And our tendency, as a result, is to shut it down. But what strewing for this can do is to provide your children a safe way to explore different characters because it is a critically important type of play. Now, many of us can feel like our kids are stuck in only this type of play. Like they don’t imagine into little worlds at all. And they’re always just dressing up and being big imaginative, play, being characters, playhouse, play doctors, playing lions and tigers and rhinoceroses and dinosaurs. But that’s okay. It’s an important key phase of play, and we want them to do that. Now what I highly recommend having is a dressing up box or chest. And what you would keep here is costumes. If you have any store-bought costumes, if you have any handmade costumes or if you don’t simply stocking it with clothes and accessories that you no longer use yourself and that you have around.
So things like scarves, hats, socks, shoes, they love adult shoes often. Necklaces and bracelets. Of course, you gotta watch for safety with the really little ones, glosses, bags and just having a kind of free-for-all box that’s easy to tidy up ’cause you just stuff it all back in there. Now you don’t want it stuffed to the brim, or they won’t be able to maneuver it, and they’ll often end up dumping it all, and it will be hard for you to keep tidying up. But if it’s just a big chest, then it’s also not such a big deal to always just scoop it all back in. What I have found is that store-bought costumes are very exciting in the beginning, but they actually offer much less open-ended options for play just like store-bought toys often are plastic and highly detailed and play for you, whereas the open-ended, more simple also store-bought, but less commercialized toys offer a wider and longer range of play.
So what I have found to be the best dressing up toy is just simple set of scarves silk scarves, which is often used in Waldorf and Montessori settings. So having just some colorful silk scarves is an absolutely great dressing up tool, but it’s also super fun to add in other things. Now with the scarves, they can become capes or headscarves. They could be pirates. They can be flags. They can be a blanket for the baby. But we’ve discussed these elsewhere. But with just a little bit of attention or just showing your child another way of tying it, or doing it, they can suddenly be opened up to a whole new world of what to do with this scarves. Whereas a very specific, highly detailed pirate costume is never going to be a doctor’s costume. Right? They’re always going to get that rigidity of only imagining it a certain way.
So that’s why I recommend, at least, alongside the costumes that you might buy also having more open-ended items such as scoffs. It could also be just open-ended hats, a beret, or a fur hat or that type of thing. Faux fur, please can often offer children a way to suddenly imagine into new characters. Now, what can be interesting with strewing for drama is to actually set up scenes in a minimalistic way. I don’t want you to go overboard. This isn’t a big job for you to do. It doesn’t have to be Pinterest worthy, but just arranging the furniture a little bit differently or putting out your movement zone in a bit of a different way. And adding in some flavor and mentioning to your child that, “Oh, it looked like a pirate ship to me.” Or, “Oh, I see how the store is set up,” when you’re looking at your play kitchen for example.
Or even just on a table setting up some products from the store and some plastic bags or some shopping bags and say, “Here I see the store.” Or adding in a baby doll to a situation, Putting a baby doll in their bed, for example, or in that carriage, or leaving out your carrier, things from your real life for them to imagine into, “Is a good way of strewing for this dramatic play.” One of the best ways we can actually use strewing for dramatic play to our benefit to healing purposes is to suggest, to prompt, or invite children to play out scenes from their real-life that sometimes might need resolving or exploring, such as saying, “Hey, this is like your teacher’s dress” Or “Here’s a stethoscope from the doctor’s office,” or setting up a little scene that reminds us of the doctor’s office or reminds us of a visit to grandma, or reminds us of the park where we fell.
Speaker 1: (05:52)
And just mentioning, I’m imagining this or I can pretend that this is, that I am the doctor, helps a child enter into that dramatic world where they can now manipulate that situation. When we’re playing dramatic play and children resolve issues. So they explore themes that holding tension for them that are unresolved for them. And playing through those scenes is what heals it for them, is what gives them the opportunity to explore it. It’s kind of like you may be venting or going to therapy, processing an event, or an interaction with another person. So children do that in play. So if you can play the doctor or play the patient and allow the child to reverse roles in that way, then you’re offering them a healthy, dramatic exploration of something that’s big for them. So it might be that you are the movers. Maybe you leave out some cardboard boxes, and you say, “Hey, I’m the mover, or do you wanna be the mover?” Maybe you’re the plumber. Maybe you’re the driver of the bus that you went on. Or maybe your someone in their life. Like maybe they could be the parent, and you could be them, or they could be the teacher, and you could be them. Or the doll could be them. Just setting up scenes and offering them up. Offering them as an opportunity, as a safe space to explore something that you think they might need exploring. Particularly if a child has nightmares about something or keeps having difficulty with something, for example, doesn’t wanna go to the swimming class, is worried about a play date, doesn’t wanna go to school, is having a hard time with a sibling or with a move. Then offering the opportunity to play that out through drama is a key way of healing and exploring those themes in a safe respect.
Typically role reversal is going to be one of the best ways for children to explore those themes. So if you could say, “I’m you” And then explore themes such as leaving and returning. So if you’d say, I’m you, “Hey, don’t need me, mommy. Never go, never go. I won’t let you go. Stay, stay, stay.” And don’t be afraid of taking the big emotions that are scaring you in real life and blowing them up into even bigger proportions in the play. Cry about it, scream about it, get really upset about it because this is the place where you can safely explore those. It’s kind of like when you go to a therapist. It’s okay to say things that you would never say in real life to the person who you’re talking about. You might never say how upset you are at them or how much you hate them, but when you go to a therapist, it’s a safe space to do that.
That’s what play is here. So we wanna actually help them go to the edges of those feelings without, of course projecting our feelings onto them and really trying to reflect back what we think their experience of the scenario is. So my recommendation here is really just to set up little worlds that are relevant and interesting for your child. Things that they see every day or places where they’ve had a bit of difficulty. The call, the preschool, this swimming lesson, the ballet lesson, nighttime and bedtime, that type of thing. And if you suddenly set up a bed in another room just by putting a blanket down or a scarf and say, “I’m going to sleep now good night. Actually, I don’t want to sleep.” And you act out what’s happening in real life. Sometimes they’ll be intrigued by that, and it will be a way of solving that problem later or at least processing it for much more healing now. If you’d like this, I’d love to hear your comments on this in the section below. Bye.