TL;DR
- A University of Sydney study found toddlers with stronger pretend play skills had fewer emotional and behavioral difficulties in primary school.
- Researchers expected emotional regulation to explain the link. It didn’t — something deeper is happening in the developing brain.
- All of it counts: wooden spoons, colanders, couch cushions. You don’t need a Pinterest playroom.
- Less structured time isn’t less development. Boredom is often the doorway to imaginative play.
- Simplifying your mornings creates more space for free play — and less mental load for you.
You let your toddler play with a colander and a spatula for 45 minutes while you actually finished something. And you felt guilty about it the whole time.
Friend, stop. Because a new study from the University of Sydney just confirmed that the colander incident was doing more for your kid’s brain than you realized.
What the Research Actually Found (And It’s Not What You’d Expect)
Researchers at the University of Sydney tracked children from toddlerhood into early elementary school, measuring their pretend play ability at ages 2–3 and their mental health outcomes years later. Their findings were published in the Early Childhood Education Journal in May 2026.
What they found: toddlers with stronger pretend play skills had significantly fewer emotional and behavioral difficulties in primary school — even after accounting for family income, the mother’s mental health, the child’s language ability, and the security of their parent relationship.
Here’s the part the researchers didn’t see coming. They assumed emotional regulation — the ability to manage emotions and impulses — would explain the connection. It didn’t. When they controlled for emotional regulation, the link still held.
Reporting by PsyPost noted the researchers concluded that other, less understood developmental processes may be involved — and that this finding matters especially now, as children spend more time on screens and in structured activities, with less time for free imaginative play than any previous generation.
What Counts as Pretend Play (Spoiler: You’re Already There)
Pretend play is not an elaborate setup. It’s not a toy kitchen from Facebook Marketplace or a playroom with labeled bins. It’s any moment where your child uses imagination to represent something beyond what’s literally in front of them.
- A block becomes a car. A banana becomes a phone.
- A laundry basket becomes a pirate ship.
- A wooden spoon becomes a microphone, then a sword, then a baby — all in five minutes.
- A couch cushion becomes a stepping stone across hot lava.
At ages 2–3, this looks like brief role substitution and simple scenarios. By ages 4–5, it evolves into full narratives with rules and characters only they fully understand. Both count. All of it counts.
You don’t need to buy anything new. You need to create a little space and get out of the way.
The Case for Less Structure (Science Says So)
Here’s the uncomfortable flip side of this research: the thing that helps their brains is the thing we keep scheduling away.
Boredom gets a bad reputation in mom culture. We’ve somehow internalized the idea that a bored child is a child we’ve failed. But boredom is often what happens right before the couch cushions become a spaceship. The “I’m bored” complaint is the doorway to imaginative play.
The research on pretend play is specifically about child-directed, unstructured time — not time you staged to look like free play. Actual open-ended time where your child decides what they’re doing and you don’t manage it.
This is also good news for the mental load you’re carrying. One less thing to orchestrate is one less decision to make — and the evidence suggests the unorchestrated time is actually doing more. If you’ve ever felt like planning and supervising every moment of your child’s day is unsustainable, you’re not imagining the weight of it. Here’s your permission to put some of it down.
How to Support Pretend Play Without a Full Playroom Overhaul
A few practical things that make a real difference:
- Rotate a small basket of open-ended objects. Scarves, cardboard tubes, clothespins, small containers, wooden blocks. Novelty helps — you don’t need more stuff, just occasionally different stuff.
- Choose open-ended over battery-powered. Toys that do the “playing” for your child leave less room for imagination. Toys that can become anything invite more.
- Reduce the management. Resist the urge to narrate, direct, or improve their play. The research is specifically about unstructured, child-led time.
- Let the mess happen. Play with depth tends to be play with mess. The broom comes out when they’re done.
And if simplifying your morning would create more space for this kind of play — rather than handing over the iPad just to survive breakfast — that’s exactly what The 10-Minute Reset is built for. A routine that actually holds, in under 10 minutes, so the rest of your day has room to breathe.
FAQ
What activities or toys are best for pretend play?
Open-ended materials work best — blocks, scarves, cardboard boxes, wooden figures, and ordinary kitchen items. Research shows children create richer, more sustained imaginative play with objects that can become anything, rather than purpose-built toys that do one specific thing.
How can I encourage pretend play?
The most effective strategy is to reduce structured activities during certain windows and allow for boredom. Set out a basket of interesting objects, step back, and resist the urge to direct or improve the play. Your job is to make room for it — not to run it.
How much pretend play do toddlers need per day?
There’s no rigid number, but researchers recommend that unstructured, child-directed play make up a significant portion of a toddler’s day. Even 30–45 minutes of uninterrupted imaginative play daily is meaningful — and it doesn’t need to happen all at once.
