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There are a dozen of ways that you can help your child learn and develop his skills. Nonetheless, according to a famous educational psychologist, there is one trick that is “intrinsically valuable” to the development of basic skills. Dan O’Hare, founder of Edpsy, an online community for educational psychologists will share with us today how to do just that. 

O’Hare said that play was often seen as a “means to an end” to demonstrate a child’s social skills. He argued that unstructured “child-directed or child-led” play lets children develop their own imagination.

O’Hare explained: “Often I think there’s a view sometimes that there’s a right way to play and that right way to play often looks like playing with other children in a cooperative game, but you need to have quite a lot of skills to get to that stage and actually with younger children, it’s entirely normal for younger children to play by themselves or play next to a child.” 

He added that it was important to recognize the skills that independent play helps a child to develop, such as motor skills, as well as negotiation and conflict management skills. 

Even “rough play,” which O’Hare said parents can be quick to stop, could help development in terms of allowing a child to learn “how to manage their body, strength, balance [and] risk,” for example.

O'Hare backs his argument with research

O’Hare referred to research published in 2019 by the University College London’s Institute of Education, which found that schoolchildren aged 5-7 had 45 minutes less break time than kids in 1995. The research concluded that shortening school break times in England could be harming children’s development. 

O’Hare also argued that trying to fill a child’s time is the wrong thing to do. Boredom can actually help them develop imagination. 

 “Having downtime, having time where’s there’s boredom is actually pretty good, in terms of managing and learning to entertain yourself, to be creative, to problem solve,” he said.