• Posted April 24, 2026

Playing Pretend Provides Unexpected Benefits For Growing Kids

The imaginative power of children is profound, captured in a single oft-used phrase: “Let’s pretend.”

Pretend play is seen as a harmless way for kids to have fun, but it might serve a very important role in their mental health and development, a new study says.

Toddlers who demonstrated a greater ability to play pretend wound up having fewer emotional and behavioral problems by the time they entered grade school, researchers reported April 21 in the Early Childhood Education Journal.

“These findings are especially relevant today, when many children spend more time on screens, take part in more structured activities and have fewer opportunities for free, imaginative play,” said lead researcher Fotini Vasilopoulos, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney in Australia.

“Pretend play can be easy to overlook, yet it plays an important role in supporting children’s mental health,” she said in a news release.

For the new study, researchers observed pretend play among more than 1,400 Australian children for two years, watching them as they acted out imaginary situations.

They then assessed the children’s mental health and behavior at ages 4 to 5, and again at ages 6 to 7, using parent and educator reports.

Results showed that higher pretend play ability at ages 2 to 3 was associated with better mental health as kids age into elementary school.

Researchers also examined whether emotional regulation explained this relationship, with kids becoming better at managing their feelings by acting out different positive and negative scenarios.

However, that proved to not be the case.

“Emotional regulation – the ability to manage and respond to emotions – is often assumed to explain how early play influences later mental health, but that isn’t what we found,” Vasilopoulos said. “When emotional regulation was taken into account, the association did not hold, suggesting other, less understood developmental processes may be involved.”

Instead, it might be that children performing pretend play are engaging motor brain regions thought to play a role in attention and anxiety, researchers speculated. 

By simulating actions with objects – a stick becoming a magic sword, for instance – kids might be contributing positively to their own brain development.

In the meantime, researchers offered some tips for encouraging pretend play:

• Let play unfold for its own sake. If a child playing pretend makes a mistake counting or naming things, don’t interrupt to correct them.

• Follow the child’s lead if you want to join in. Wait for the kids to “serve” up the pretend notion, then follow along, although gentle prompts might help them begin.

• Respond to their play with simple observations or open-ended comments. Describe what’s happening or wonder aloud what might happen next, rather than trying to direct them with instructions.

• Step into the play. Ask a child what role you can take on, or suggest being a low-power character like a confused visitor or forgetful customer.

“Pretend play doesn’t need to be complicated or instructional,” Vasilopoulos said. “Using this kind of gentle, child‑led involvement may be one practical way to build the pretend play abilities our research links to better mental health outcomes later in childhood.”

More information

The Child Mind Institute has more on the power of pretend play.

SOURCE: University of Sydney, news release, April 21, 2026