Can pretend play prevent childhood anxiety? Research finds that imaginative toddlers have fewer behavioral issues in primary school.

“Pretend play doesn’t need to be complicated or instructional,” Vasilopoulos said. “Using this kind of gentle, child‑led ...

This is genius! Saturday, December 8th has been declared "Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day." The whole idea is to pretend for the day that you are a traveler from a different time - except that, of ...

For children, rocks can be spaceships. Pens can be fairies. And this kind of play can help protect mental health in childhood ...

Children who demonstrate pretend play ability as toddlers have significantly fewer emotional and behavioral difficulties at ...

From developing social skills to fostering creativity, pretend play in young children is likened to being a "metaphoric multivitamin" in an editorial published in the journal Neuroscience and ...

In a series of tea party-like experiments, Johns Hopkins University researchers demonstrated for the first time that apes can use their imagination and play pretend, an ability thought to be uniquely ...

When children pretend, they often demonstrate skills more advanced than they may show in other contexts, which suggests that pretend play could be a unique context for intervention and learning.

A while back, I met up with my pal Jenny Lawson, who was in town recording the audiobook version of her memoir, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. I asked her how it was going, and she told me that it ...