Learning Through Make-Believe Play

Two days a week, Kevin leaves his office 45 minutes early to take charge of his 2-year-old daughter, Sophie, while her mother, a university professor, teaches a late class. One balmy spring afternoon, Kevin retrieved Sophie at her child-care center and drove the 15-minute route home. Invited to look in on Sophie’s play, I met the pair at the front door and nestled into a rocking chair from which to observe unobtrusively. After downing the last bite of her snack, Sophie grabbed Kevin’s hand and led him across the family room to a rug lined on two sides by shelves filled with books, stuffed animals, and other play props. Sophie moved a toy horse and cow inside a small, enclosed fence that she and Kevin had put together the day before. Then she turned the animals on their sides and moved them toward each other. “Why are horse and cow lying down?” Kevin asked. “’Cause they’re tired,” Sophie answered, pushing the two animals closer together. “Oh, yes,” Kevin affirmed. Then, building on Sophie’s theme, he placed a teddy bear on another part of the rug and offered, “I think Ted’s tired, too. I’m going to start a bed over here for some other animals.” Sophie turned toward the teddy bear, lifted his paw, and exclaimed, “She wants a lollipop to hold in her hand!” “A lollipop in her hand? We haven’t got any lollipops, have we?” answered Kevin. “Laura has!” declared Sophie, glancing at me. “Has Laura got a lollipop?” Kevin queried. “Yes! She’s got all of those, and a swing and a table, too!” Sophie remarked, referring to my chair, which rocked back and forth next to an end table. “Maybe this could be a make-believe lollipop,” suggested Kevin, placing a round piece on the end of a long TinkerToy stick and handing the structure to Sophie “That’s a lollipop,” agreed Sophie, placing it in the paw of the teddy bear. “Can she suck that while she’s going off to sleep?” asked Kevin. “Do you think that’s what she wants?” “It’s a pacifier,” explained Sophie, renaming the object.

Why Children Talk to Themselves

If you could become the shadow of a 2- to 8-year-old, furtively tagging along as the child goes about his or her daily activities, you would notice a curious form of language behavior—remarks in which the child seems to talk to himself or herself or to no one in particular. This speech-to-self occurs frequently. It can surface in virtually any of the child’s pursuits—during fantasy play, drawing and painting, building with blocks, tackling academic tasks, idly passing the time of day, and quieting down before naptime or nightly sleep. Researchers call this spontaneous, self-directed talk private speech. Unlike adults, who self-consciously talk to themselves only in solitary moments, young children freely use private speech in public. So at ease are preschool and primary-school children in speaking to themselves in front of others that on observing this behavior, many adults question its normalcy! “Confused,” “touched,” and “strange” are among the descriptors I have heard them apply to self-talking children, generalizing from “crazy people,” who not only speak aloud to fantasized audiences but also act improperly in a great many ways because they are indifferent to their social surroundings. To be sure, talking to oneself in the midst of a roomful of people is not acceptable in the adult social world. Yet all of us engage in private speech from time to time. And it is ubiquitous in early childhood. When children between the ages of 3 and 10 are observed in classrooms, private speech makes up as much as 20 percent to 60 percent of their language. Why do young children engage in it so frequently? To grasp the significance of private speech in the life of the child, let’s begin by looking at it in ourselves. When are you most likely to talk out loud to yourself? In response to this question, most adults say they engage in audible self-talk when they face cognitive, emotional, or social challenges. Here are some self-reports: • “At the end of a busy day, when I’m tired and distracted, I sometimes find myself looking for an important document, for my keys, or even for where I parked my car.

The Social Origins of Mental Life

Talia and Jim’s fear of helping 7-year-old Anselmo with his homework, lest they create a dependent, immature child, is a peculiarly Western—and profoundly American—preoccupation. American middle-class parents typically regard young children as dependent beings who must be urged toward independence. In response to researchers’ queries, they frequently say that babies should be trained to be self-reliant from the first few months. Consequently, they place a high value on children’s learning and doing on their own. Repeatedly relying on others for assistance is construed as weakness, uncertainty, and lack of capacity. In keeping with this view, many American parents worry that if their children seek help, they may become dependent. A similar view permeates traditional classrooms, where an individualistic value system prevails. Children must “do their own work.” In the most intensely individualistic of these settings, conferring with your neighbor is worse than dependency; it is cheating, and teachers go so far as to set up barriers between pupils, such as upright books and cardboard screens, to prevent it. This emphasis on independent accomplishment is not broadly accepted around the world. Indeed, adults in some non-Western cultures regard American parents as rather merciless in pushing their young children toward independence—for example, when they insist that infants sleep alone rather than with their parents, or when they take pleasure in the earliest possible mastery of motor skills, such as crawling and walking, long before the child has acquired the reasoning powers to avoid steep staircases and busy roadways. Diverse non-Western peoples and American ethnic minorities stress interdependence—that children must feel intimately linked to others to become competent and self-reliant. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Guatemalan-Mayan, eastern Kentucky Appalachian, and many other cultural groups regard newborn infants as psychologically separate beings whose most important task is to develop an interdependent relationship with their community—an emotional and social foundation that is crucial for survival and learning. Witness the following conclusion by a researcher who compared American with Japanese infant rearing practices: “An American mother-infant relationship consists of two individuals ... a Japanese mother-infant relationship consists of only one individual, i.e., mother and infant are not divided.”

Learning in Classrooms

A visitor entering Tamara’s combined kindergarten/first-grade classroom is likely to be struck by its atmosphere of calm purposefulness, given that so much is happening at once. On a typical day, twenty-two 5- to 7-year-olds are busy working on diverse activities throughout the room. At ten o’clock one Tuesday, several children were in the writing center—one preparing a thank you note and four others collaborating on making a list of the names of everyone in the class. In the reading center, five children were browsing the shelves or reading books, in pairs and individually. At a table next to shelves filled with math materials, four children worked in pairs on a problem requiring them to choose items from a restaurant menu without exceeding their budget. Yet another pair was immersed in an interactive computer activity about plants as sources of foods. Tamara was seated at a table, reading and discussing a story with a cluster of six children. The children in Tamara’s class come from a variety of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. About three-fourths live in the middle-income neighborhood surrounding the school, located in a midsize Midwestern city. The rest are bussed from a housing project for low-income families several miles away. Two children have reading disabilities, and one has a speech and language delay. Several times a week, a learning disabilities teacher and a speech therapist come to the classroom to assist these children. Tamara’s students present great variations in experiences, knowledge, and academic skills. She uses this diversity to enrich their learning. The classroom is organized into seven clearly defined activity centers. The largest is the reading center, which doubles as a class meeting area. Others are the writing center, the math center, the life science center, the physical science center, the art center, and the imaginative play/extended project center. Computers can be found in the life science and writing centers. All centers are brimming with materials—on shelves and in boxes and baskets, clearly labeled and within children’s easy reach. And each center contains a table to serve as a comfortable workspace for collaborative and individual pursuits.

A New View of Child Development

In my three decades of teaching university courses in child development, I have come to know thousands of students, many of whom were parents or who became parents soon after completing my class. I also served on boards of directors and advisory committees for child-care centers, preschools, elementary schools, and parent organizations. And my research continually drew me into classrooms, where for countless hours I observed and recorded preschool and school-age children’s activities, social interactions, and solitary behaviors, in hopes of answering central questions about how they learn. As a byproduct of those experiences, parents repeatedly approached me with concerns about how to foster their child’s development in the early years. Their fervent questions, at times riddled with doubt and anxiety, revealed that creating optimum learning environments for young children at home—and ensuring their access to development-enhancing experiences in child care, preschool, and school—have become mounting parental challenges. Consider the following problematic situations that parents recently raised with me: • Bob and Sharon, parents of a 4-year-old: Our daughter, Lydia, could recite her ABCs and count from 1 to 20 by age 2 1/2. When we looked for a preschool, many programs appeared to do little more than let children play, so we chose one with lots of emphasis on academics. To me, Lydia’s preschool seems like great preparation for kindergarten and first grade, but each morning, Lydia hates to go. Why is Lydia, who’s always been an upbeat, curious child, so unhappy? • Angela, mother of a 4-year-old and 6-year-old: My husband and I have demanding careers and need to bring work home in the evenings. I’ve read that it’s the quality of time we spend with our children that’s important, not the quantity. We try hard to give Victor and Jeannine our undivided attention, but they’re often whiny, demanding, and quarrelsome. Many times we end up sending them to their rooms or letting them watch TV, just to get some peace after a long day. What’s the best way to create quality parent–child time? • Talia, mother of a 7-year-old: My son Anselmo, a first grader, constantly asks us to help him with his homework.

Helping Children with Deficits and Disabilities

The movie Mr. Holland’s Opus, in its main plot and its subplot, is a thoroughly Vygotskian story. It chronicles a high-school music teacher’s metamorphosis from a detached instructor, cynical about his students’ interests and motivations, into an inspiring mentor for hundreds of young music appreciators and instrumentalists. Unable to make a living at his first love, composing, Mr. Holland turned to the professional safety net he had earned in college: his teaching credential. Reluctantly in the classroom, he drilled his students on textbook facts and conducted the school orchestra in a flat, lifeless fashion. Without a meeting of minds and a jointly constructed “zone,” teacher and students disengaged, growing further and further apart. Painfully aware of failing to “reach” his classes, Mr. Holland set aside assigned texts and musical scores one day and tried to “connect” with his students. “What kind of music do you like?” he asked. Noticing their shocked and confused expressions, he added sympathetically, “Don’t be afraid.” “Rock ‘n’ roll!” was the nearly uniform answer. Next, Mr. Holland began to build a tie between students’ current understandings and where he wanted to lead them. “What’s this?” he asked as he played a lively rock tune on the piano. The classroom came alive. For the first time, students smiled and looked alert. “‘Lovers Concerto’!” they chorused. Then Mr. Holland asked whether anyone liked the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. In the face of blank stares, he countered, “Sure you do,” as he demonstrated how “Lovers Concerto” is a variation on Bach’s “Minuet in G.” The “zone” under way, teacher and students began to extend it. “Hands were up in the air, they were answering questions. It was so much fun!” Mr. Holland reported enthusiastically to his wife that evening, in a reversal of his usual pessimistic recap of the school day. Mr. Holland discovered that teaching requires both “heart” and learning goals tailored to children’s interests, knowledge, and skills. Each is essential for building a relationship that engages the learner. Yet Mr. Holland could not transfer these basic realizations to the rearing of his own child, Col, born with a profound hearing loss.

A Vision for Parenting and Educational Practice

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory is an empowering perspective for parents and teachers. In underscoring the role of adult–child dialogues in children’s development, it offers a balanced resolution to the dichotomy between adult directiveness and child-centeredness that has, for decades, permeated American parenting advice and educational practice. Consistent with a wealth of current research, sociocultural theory stresses that children contribute actively to their own development, etching their unique imprint on everything they learn. To implement sociocultural concepts of child rearing and teaching, parents and teachers must have a firm grasp of children’s temperaments, interests, knowledge, skills, and strengths and weaknesses. Yet each ingredient of effective dialogue—the shared understanding essential for genuine communication, the sensitive guidance inherent in scaffolding, the narrative conversation that builds the child’s cultural worldview, and the meaningful activities that spark learning of all kinds—requires that adults and children join forces. To create the “zone”—the dynamic region in which children acquire cognitive and social competencies and the capacity to use thought to guide behavior—children and important adults in their lives must collaborate. Adults are leaders in this collaborative process. Through dialogues, they fashion the child’s lifeline with humanity. Weaken or sever that line, and no matter how well endowed children are genetically, they become less than they otherwise could be. Although not the sole influence, adult-child togetherness through the give-and-take of communication indelibly affects children’s development. Dialogues with parents, teachers, and other significant adults transform the child’s mind, connecting it with other minds and transferring to it a wealth of understandings and skills. From the sociocultural perspective, parents help children realize their potential by making a long-term commitment to sensitivity, consistency, and richness of interaction, not by offering brief bursts of attention interspersed with little involvement. This means that good parenting is possible only through great investments of time. Early in this book, I cited evidence indicating that contemporary parents—even those with demanding careers who claim the greatest time scarcity—have ample time for generous involvement in their children’s lives.

The Child in Contemporary Culture

In this chapter, I take up dilemmas that today’s parents face in rearing young children. Throughout this book, we have touched on myriad forces that make contemporary parenting highly challenging. These include one-sided, contradictory messages in the parenting-advice literature; career pressures that impinge on parent involvement in children’s lives; abysmally weak American child-care services to assist employed parents in their child-rearing roles; cultural violence and excessive materialism permeating children’s worlds; schools with less than optimal conditions for children’s learning; and impediments to granting children with deficits and disabilities social experiences that maximize their development. Contemporary parents do not just find child rearing more difficult; they feel more uncertainty than their predecessors about whether and how to intervene in their children’s activities and behavior. In the pages that follow, I draw on major themes of this book—the power of adult warmth, appropriate expectations, narrative conversation, make-believe play, and teaching in the “zone”—to show how Vygotsky’s sociocultural approach can serve as a guide for resolving a great many child-rearing concerns. This chapter answers twenty questions drawn from a survey of over four hundred parents of 2- to 8-year-olds living in a Midwestern city with a population of one hundred thousand. In that survey, I asked parents to list any questions about young children’s development and learning that interested or worried them. The questions I answer here address issues that appeared most often in parents’ responses. Each represents a concern that surfaced in three or more parental replies. I intend these answers to parents’ questions to reflect a way of thinking about child rearing, not a set of recipes for dealing with specific events. When parents are familiar with principles that are grounded in contemporary theory and research on children’s development, they can better deal with the quandaries generated by the changing home, school, and community contexts in which today’s children grow up. Although adverse cultural trends have complicated and threatened good child rearing, parents—as agents of change, buffers against stressful life circumstances, and gatekeepers of learning opportunities—can do much to protect, restore, and reshape children’s experiences.