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Do autistic toddlers play with parents?

Autistic children enjoy play and learn through play, just as typically developing children do. Through playing with others, your child can learn and practise new social skills and abilities. These skills are important for your child's overall development.

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Playing with others: why it’s important for autistic children

Autistic children enjoy play and learn through play, just as typically developing children do. Through playing with others, your child can learn and practise new social skills and abilities. These skills are important for your child’s overall development. They include sharing things, taking turns, communicating with others, imagining what other people are thinking and feeling, and so on. Playing with others can also lay the foundation for early friendships. And friendships are important for children’s confidence, self-worth and sense of belonging. Playing with you is key to your child’s development too. When you play with your child, you help your child develop skills, including play skills. And playing with your child is also one of the best ways to tune in to your child and build your relationship.

Stages of social play

The ability to play with others, or social play, develops in stages:

playing alone

playing alongside others

playing and sharing with others

playing cooperatively with others.

You can help your autistic child by noticing which stage of social play your child is at and by giving your child opportunities, support and encouragement to progress to the next stage. While children are developing their ability to play with others, they’re likely to still want to spend time playing by themselves. It’s OK if your child wants to play alone some of the time.

Playing alone

In this stage of social play, children play alone and independently. They don’t try to get close to other children, and they don’t pay attention to what others are doing. You can encourage autistic child’s solitary play skills by starting with activities that have a clear goal or end point. Keep the play activity short to start with, so your child can finish it quickly and feel successful.

Simple jigsaw puzzles can be good for this stage of play.

Playing alongside others

Children at this stage of play start to play alongside other children. They might use the same toys as the children around them. You can promote play in this stage by encouraging your autistic child to play at an activity on their own but alongside other children. You can encourage your child to copy the other children’s play while your child is playing on their own.

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Playing with toy trains or cars can be good for this stage of play.

Playing and sharing with others

In this stage of play, children interact with other children. They give, take and share play materials. You can help your autistic child develop their ability to play and share with others by encouraging them to swap things while still playing on their own. For example, if your child is cycling or scooting with other children, you could encourage them to swap bikes, trikes or scooters.

Playing cooperatively with others

Playing cooperatively with others includes playing games with rules, making up rules, and working together on something, like building a cubbyhouse or making a sandcastle. Many of the social rules of cooperative play can be difficult for autistic children to understand and put into action. You can help your child by using clear instructions to simplify the rules of games. For example, ‘First you hide somewhere in the house. Then Sam counts to 10. Then Sam comes to find you. When Sam finds you, it’s your turn to count while Sam hides’. You can use autistic children’s thinking and learning strengths when you’re helping them with social play. For example, if your child is a visual learner, you could take pictures of different steps in a game or activity. Or your child might prefer to learn the rules of a game using a social story. Making games more visual can also help too. For example, the person who’s ‘it’ could wear a special hat.

Helping autistic children learn about and enjoy playing with others

Here are some other ideas to get your child interacting and playing with others:

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