Child development: the great mimic, it's exciting!

Children 3 to 6 years love games and toys of imitation (false stove, small market, veterinary kit) ... What they bring?

What the children play between 3 and 6 years?

In many things, if they have already been asked earlier in their lives. For the child who had a particular problem without development, the game is the mediation that allows it to take on the world, to better evaluate their relationships with others.

This also gives the possibility to tame the thoughts, many at that age, that arise in his inner world and the sometimes bewildering. It can be aggressive ideas, normal, the toddler needs to evacuate (fighting, biting and other "prints" of hair are not uncommon at the time of recess!), Of questions about sexuality ("How is the baby?"), anxiety ...


When he plays the doctor, the dad and mom, or embodies a cartoon hero, the child gives shape to the emotions he feels in the staging. He thus tries to understand what is happening around him and what reports are made between people.

What is the role of imitation games?

Between 3 and 6 years, the child who plays is based on concrete things, he has seen or experienced, to escape and imagine. The imitation games are thus based on situations and objects that seek to recall the reality kit doctor or veterinarian miniature garden tools or equipment care, play the market ...

By reproducing the actions and reactions of its models (usually parents), by appropriating their thoughts, the child looks to the future and acquire motor skills or socially for its development. A bit like the apprentice who reproduced the gestures of the craftsman who shaped.

Why the child imitates he especially at this time?

The baby already mimics the facial expressions of his parents. From 3 years, the child imitates, pretends, "playing" because he wants to be great, as Dad or Mom as such.

This is especially important for him to identify with them it is in full oedipal phase: to simplify, he wants to take the place of same-sex parent. So the little boy wants to occupy the place that his father holds with his mother, and daughter of his mother from his father.

This engine takes the toddler to imitate his father or mother to "seduce" the other parent. In short, play helps him become great.