Does Dramatic Play Teach a Child to Live in a Fantasy World?
Dramatic play is not a fantasy world on any level. Dramatic play is a manifestation of intelligence on an imaginative level. Children learn how to “fit” into the world by imitating the actions of others. Dramatic play is essentially “life skill training” for children that involves the child in physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. The dialogue created with other children helps fine-tune the child’s sense of self. Even children, who participate in dramatic play on their own, are capable of reasoning within themselves to create scenarios that involve real life situations that they have witnessed, or imaginary situations with issues that they can solve intellectually.
Sociologist George Herbert Mead surmised that the self consists of two parts. The first being the “I” self which is a subjective sense of who we are, and the “Me” self which is the objective part of “self.” The development of sense of self, according to Mead, is comprised of three stages: the imitation stage (birth to age two), the play stage (age two to four), and the game stage which never truly ends. The social abilities expressed in the “game stage” are the result of the acclimatizing of the latter two. When advancing to the “game stage,” children and adults possess a higher cognitive ability to understand the expectation of others, realization that others have demands placed upon them, and the development of empathy.
Dramatic play helps children become aware of their fit in the larger picture of the world around them. It also helps them to learn from each other while developing social and cognitive responses to external incidents. Dramatic play with other children instills a level of experience in the child regarding the fact there are some situations that they cannot control. For instance, if a preschool age child is building a tower with blocks as if he is a machine, and another child decides that he is King Kong, we all know the result. The first child feels a lack of situational control, and possibly he will display his emotions with a meltdown. When he notices that others are shocked by his emotional outburst, he quickly explains what happened, by defending himself and his behavior, and blaming the other child. He then is playing “the game.”
Erving Goffman, author of the book “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” used the theatre as a metaphor of social interaction. In the theatre, actors prepare with rehearsal, props and costume back stage to proceed to the front stage as characters. Scripts are memorized, and the outcome of the story predetermined. Just like a play, social interactions are what we put out there for the world to see, our front stage self. We all have gone over the ramifications of a potential situation in our minds, we have even perceived several outcomes. We might even talk to ourselves in a mirror. We are practicing for that front stage situation where we are putting our best out there for the world to see.
We could take the necessity for dramatic play to a deeper level of reasoning by stating that our lives are consistent with a stage, we have our front stage self that is what we portray to the world, and our backstage self that is hidden at home from the general population. Goffman’s dramaturgical theory suggests that identity is constantly re-made and re-defined as a person interacts with others. Therefore, we can presume that children who are frequently involved with dramatic play may be more intelligent when it comes to social cues and certain behaviors are not acceptable because of their experiences from pretend play with peers. They become better actors on the front stage of life, and as they observe the expectations of others.
The ability to perfect the front stage self through dramatic play at a young age will continually help the child succeed later in life by undergoing social interactions, observation of social cues and reactions that are appropriate, and in general, give them the ability to reason both verbally and cognitively to make sense of sometimes unpredictable real life circumstances. Dramatic play is a necessity for a well-developed consciousness and social distinctness, and should not be discouraged, but enjoyed.
