We take up what we reported in our article on play to address this topic.
Around the age of 3 or so, the socialisation phase begins, and your child will start to play actively 'together' with other children of his or her age, developing shared play (and not just alongside other children playing). Playing together is a good training ground for your child to:
- learn to respect their turn in play;
- increase the level of empathy and sharing of space, time and objects;
- limit their own egocentrism;
- learn to negotiate and find a common agreement, a compromise;
- experimenting with swapping roles (e.g. once a bandit, once a sheriff...).
Towards the age of 5-6, play becomes group-based, involving an increasing number of players in choral activities with shared and pre-established rules. Increasingly, at this age, they express through play their feelings of rivalry and aggression, shape conflicts and experience frustrations, within the magical (almost theatrical) representation of life, which is the role of play itself!
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