The “P” in PLAtime stands for “purposed” time. Purposed time is when a caregiver has pondered a target they would like to help a child practice. Here is a list of possible purposes for you to consider before a play session.
All of these concepts require practice and repetition if your child is going to become skilled users of these social relational tools. They are not born with them. Parents can use these key developmental targets to build unshakable bridges in their children's toddler and elementary years that hold firm throughout teen years and adulthood.
The back and forth a mom builds rolling a ball with her toddler can transition to great conversations during backyard catch in pre-teen years and wisdom discussions in adulthood. Strong relational consistency in the home overflows to relationships outside the home. When a child becomes a "pro-turn-taker" with mom or dad, they go out into the world to be a turn-taking friend.
Success increases when parents can understand the "why" behind the "what we are doing". Below are the "whys" behind the PLA activities as well as a few long term visions (LTV) to help understand exactly where these foundations can lead. They can be focused on at any age and practiced throughout life but some are more foundational than others so these targeted purposes are labeled: 'foundational, mid-level, Later-developing". Work on foundational ones earlier and as your child shows that skill move through middle to later-developing ones.
Attention Span:
-the time your child will remain interested in an activity or stimulus.
Foundational - 2 minutes / Later developing - 20 minutes
LTV: your Preschool child can attend to you long enough to receive a directive. Your elementary child can attend to an assignment to complete it. Your high schooler can attend to tasks until they are finished during an after school job.
Anticipation: Mid-level
-eagerly waiting with excitement and patience; not the same if using distraction.
LTV: child can stand in line at a bounce house without a device and enjoy watching the other people in front of him
Bonding: Foundational
-"knowing" someone; really studying the intricate details of another person and increasing depth and amount of remembrance of those details
LTV: Child asks me my favorite after I have asked her’s.
Breath Support and Direction: Foundational
-strength and endurance of lungs and mouth to breathe in support of verbal language and eating
Cause and Effect/Consequences: Foundational
-understanding that one thing or occurrence can spark a reaction i.e. "if I push, the block falls down"
LTV: actions have consequences. We want to help kids learn that their choices have power to create positive effects or draining effects on their lives. Learning early and repetitively can decrease the hard lessons later.
Chain Reaction: Mid-level
-one consequence initiates another consequence which creates another consequence in a sequential order
Consideration: Mid-level to Later
-realization that other people exist and they have wants, needs, thoughts, and opinions that may differ from mine
LTV: your child considers another person's likes/dislikes when buying a birthday gift rather than purchasing only what they like and then giving it away
Construction: mid-level (comes after destructive disassembling)
-building, creating, taking multiple objects to connect ideas and make larger items
LTV: a child can put together blocks to form a city, and add cars, little people, and even some pots and pans to create swimming pools, etc. This is where you can see beauty in a playroom where they have taken toys from various groups and combined them in constructive, understandable ways.
Extremely LTV: they connect sentences to form paragraphs to form ideas
Delayed Gratification/Patience: Mid-level
-understanding the power of waiting for something to develop until it is fully ready to be utilized/experienced; whether a skill, a maturity level, a reward, or something for which one has saved
Foundational -can delay 2 minutes to wait for most candy quantity
Mid Level- can wait 1-5 hours
Later can wait weeks/months/years
LTV: your child saves money to buy something that equals the cost of two or more allowances
Description: Mid level
-verbally telling details about objects, people, or places
LTV: they can describe where they are for you to pick them up
Destruction/ Disassembling: foundational, mid-level, and later-developing
- early on, throwing, banging, and knocking over stacked blocks (this runs parallel with cause and effect)
-Mid-level - can see how to take apart a Lego build and sort;
-Later- developing- a child can break a task into smaller, pieces to tackle it without becoming overwhelmed, diagramming sentence structure
LTV: child sees playroom disaster and can clean up all the stuffed animals first, then Legos, then cooking items
OR they can clean this corner first, then move to second corner, then move to third corner, and so on until clean middle
OR in reading, can break apart words into syllables and syllables into letters
Detail Distinction: Foundational to Mid-level
-deciphering parts or characteristics of something
LTV: your child can see the differences between shapes, letters, & numbers/ they make wise choices in activities, purchases, relationships, etc.
Emotional Vocabulary: Mid-level
-words used to communicate a feeling or emotional state. Kids learn all sorts of vocabulary words-most of the first ones are of items or actions they can see or feel. Emotions are harder to grasp. These words especially need to be understood by both parent and child with common definitions.
LTV: your child can name and assess their own feelings and the strength of the emotion and choose other healthy activities that both decrease the draining or irritating emotions and increase the calming and uplifting emotions.
Energy release: Foundational
-taking in new information and stimuli can increases brain activity which increase energy in the body; familiarity can bring calming. Children are constantly taking in new information which means they build up energy and often need to just release it, especially before a nap or being required to sit still somewhere.
Eye Contact: Foundational
-calmness while looking into someone else's eyes during conversation, eventually gaining the ability to discern what they are looking at and/or how they feel
LTV: your child looks someone in the eye to shake their hand, your child connects with audience during a presentation at school, your child discerns that someone is not safe because they are saying kind words but their eyes do not support that
Fine Motor Skills: Mid-Level
-use of fingers to make small movements; these will usually also be strengtheners for writing
Giving/Following Directions: Foundational - 1-step command Mid-level 2-step commands Later-developing: 3-5 step commands
-ability to both give and follow gesture and voice commands
LTV: your child stops immediately in a dangerous situation because they hear your "Freeze!"; they do what they are asked to do the first time the request has been given
Hand-Eye coordination:Foundational
-being able to coordinate eye and hand movements simultaneously to grasp or catch or make contact with something or someone
Imagination: Mid-level
-the ability to envision things not part of reality
Joint Attention: Foundational
-when two or more people simultaneously give attention to a stimulus.
LTV: you share multiple fun experiences as you and your child look at the same thing
Joint Target: Mid-level
-two or more people aiming at the same target or goal
LTV: you and your child are working together to achieve the same end result
Leadership: Mid level
-considering the follower's perspective and modeling the way for them to complete something you already understand
LTV: your child guiding a sibling through an obstacle course, your child leading a small group of friends in an activity, your child showing someone a better way
List Usage: Mid level
-reminder tool of what needs attention and what has been completed
LTV: your child follows a list to get all needed items for recipe, your child follows list to complete all daily chores
Listening: Foundational
-hearing and looking and processing audible information
Working Memory: Mid level
-remembering what is seen or heard
LTV: your child develops study habits, your child remembers all the steps in your directions
Memory Associations: Later developing similar to memory but with more emotional involvement.
-attaching a significant memory of an experience to a common object. (a day with a favorite person to a gum flavor, song, or kitchen utensil)
LTV: you and your kids will have ways to feel close to you even when miles or time separate
Motor Planning: Foundational-clean one toy Mid-level Clean bucket of toys Later-developing: Clean one whole room
-the brain tells muscles when to move and how (often subconsciously)
LTV: child begins to step forward before throwing because they have watched your model or you have told them to do so
Matching: Foundational
-finding the corresponding item whether it is symbols, numbers, colors, letters, etc.
Narrative: Later-developing, increased narrative skills have been linked to helping one process trauma and increased resilience
-Practice putting together a story line
LTV: your child can tell you what happened when they were injured, they can recount the events of their school day in an understandable format, this helps with reading
Oral Motor Skills: Foundational
-movement and strength to move the mouth for sounds and eating
Patience: Mid-level to Later -developing
-Waiting without frustration
LTV: being able to stay calm until it the scheduled time for something
Perspective: Later- developing
-considering one's own point-of-view and another person's point-of-view
LTV: your child can see when they have limited information/ they can imagine themselves in someone's elses circumstance
Planning: Later developing
-cognitively determining a series of actions in advance and then going about their completion
LTV: your child tackles a project or cleans their room without assistance (** NOTE: the executive function required to clean an entire room without a checklist or other cue does not fully develop until later teen years) shorter term vision is socks before shoes, brush teeth before bed, pack lunch, etc.
Prediction: Mid-level- in story with pics to later-developing
-the ability to use experience to guess what will happen if a certain stimulus is introduced or action implemented
LTV: your child sees that danger is ahead physically or in life and making a decision to alter the outcome
Print Identification: Mid-level
-seeing and recognizing numbers, letters, words, symbols etc.
Problem Solving: Foundational: top on or off Tupperware, Mid level: shape sorters up to more complex puzzles Later: Works through an idea of how to organize a schedule
-when given an obstacle or situation, breaking down the sections in one's mind to form optional solutions and then working through a process to overcome or complete the situation
LTV: your child breaks something but is able to find the best way to fix it/ your child finds themselves in conflict with a friend but works to find a compromise or asks forgiveness so they do not lose the relationship
Role play: Foundational to Mid-level
-pretending to take on a characteristic or role
LTV: your child can prepare or practice doing something before actually doing it (i.e. calling and ordering pizza, calling 911 in an emergency, safety measures to exit a burning building calmly, introducing themselves to someone, helping an injured friend by getting a cold cloth or bandaid)
Same/Different: Foundational
-comparing/ contrasting aspects of two or more things that are alike and different
Sequencing: Later
-understanding what must come first, in the middle, and last in a series
LTV: your child puts on their shoes after socks, makes a sandwich, useful in homework and chores, reading
Self-Awareness: Later
-being able to study one's own being, thoughts, actions and motives
LTV: your child can describe themselves and their feelings, thoughts
Self-restraint/ regulation: Foundational: In Freeze Dance game can hold body still until music starts again Mid Level holding back voice or movement to give another person a turn or to be quiet in a situation, Later not reacting when provoked Much Later: can choose an activity to cheer themselves up if sad or go release energy if restless
-monitoring and choosing things for self
LTV: your child walks away from argument to cool down, waits their turn, does not just react immediately to some perceived offense,
Sensory: Foundational information
-input that involves the senses of see, taste, touch, feel, hear
Shared goal/ target: similar to joint target
-two or more people working toward same task
Shared experience: similar to joint attention
-two or more people experiencing the same stimulus with individual perspective
Symbolic Play /Pretend Play: Mid level
-the use of one item in place of another. This leads to greater problem solving. i.e. a block for a cell phone, a pan for a toy car ramp
LTV: you child can improvise with what they have to complete a task, they don't become paralyzed by circumstances
Teamwork: Foundational one partner Mid level family or smaller group Later entire team
-figuring out your own role on a team, completing your responsibility with humility, trusting other members to complete their own role but encouraging them if needed, taking credit together
LTV: your child shows great sportsmanship, builds up and encourages, does not boast
Time Concepts: Mid Level to Later
-for transitions, for task completion, for compensation, for delayed gratification
Turn Taking: Foundational
-back and forth reciprocity seen in conversation (talking then listening); playing games (you go, then I go)
LTV: fundamental for conversation, taking turns with chores or responsibilities, waiting in line, playing games, successful driving skills
Trust: Foundational
-believing someone is not deceiving you, will come back, wants to be with you, wants what is best for you
