Dressing up and imaginative play is an important part of children’s development.
Dressing up is essentially role play and role playing has long been a key tool in therapy and psychology. For good reason.
It engages emotion, cognition, language and sensory motor skills all at once dress-up role playing opens all sorts of connections and pathways throughout your child’s brain.
This sort of increased activity is key to the development of broad-based intelligence in children.
Some of the other benefits of dress-ups for children are:
- It promotes independence: when children play dress-ups they’re also learning the mechanics of getting clothes on and off. In other words, they’ll learn to dress themselves. You’ll get out the door quicker every day. It’s win-win.
- It expands speech and language skills: as young children take on different roles and characters their brains grasp wider for the appropriate phrasing, language and speech patterns to go with that role.
- Emotional development: exploring different aspects of their personalities helps children understand and process their own emotions better. You will also find out a lot about their inner world if you pay attention!
To make sure dressing up and role playing become part of your child’s day-to-day activity, the easiest thing to do is:
Set up your own dress-ups box at home
Having your own dress-ups box eliminates mess and frustration and lets them dip in and out as they choose.
And fear not! You don’t need to be able to sew to make great dress ups. Nor do you have to go to the dreaded party shop for all that cheap nylon rubbish. In fact, if you need a no-sew costume in a hurry, check out our five videos of no-sew dress-ups to make yourself.
How to set up your dress-up box
You’ll need at least one large storage box but two is ideal. That way as the collection grows you can have it sorted into:
- Costumes
- Accessories and hats
If you are lucky enough to have lots of room, you could set up a dress-ups corner. This could have a hat rack for hats and coats, a wall of stick-on hooks for beads and jewels, a shoe rack for shoes and some big boxes with all the costumes. Oh to be so lucky!
Failing that, a couple of big boxes is a great place to start. But don’t store them away, put them somewhere prominent in your child’s room so they’re always at hand and don’t have to be asked for.
Filling your dress-up box
- Talk to family members: older members may have some terrific hats, gloves and brooches to donate.
- A visit to the local op shop can also be a fun activity
- Key op shop items are: waistcoats, suit jackets, formal dresses, handbags, ties, scarves, beads, trinkets, shoes, hats and glasses (reading and sunglasses)
- Make sure you choose clothes and accessories that can be put on and taken off easily.
- To add to the range, you can also make your own dress-ups at home – our costume tutorial videos will show you how.
You can add to the box over the years with store-bought dress-ups as well. But homemade items and items from Granny are always the most treasured and unique.
This article was written by Penny Flanagan for Kidspot, Australia’s largest parenting website. Sources include communicate, OneStepAhead and education.com
