Why play is important for baby emotional development
Play is important because it gives your baby a chance to learn about, explore, express and communicate emotions like happiness or frustration.
When your baby learns about emotions through play in infancy, it lays the foundation for understanding and managing emotions later in childhood. This is good for your baby’s self-regulation, behaviour and relationships.
Play is the natural way that babies learn and develop. It’s important for all areas of development, including emotional development.
You have a key role in your baby’s play and development. That’s because play for babies is mostly about back-and-forth interactions with you. Just making faces with you is a game for your baby. And as you gaze into each other’s eyes, you build and strengthen your bond with your baby too.
What to expect from baby emotions
Your baby is likely to:
- laugh out loud at 2-4 months
- recognise different facial expressions from about 4 months
- develop a fear of strangers from about 5-6 months
- show signs of separation anxiety from about 6-7 months, even if you just walk out of a room in your own home
- give loving cuddles from about 10 months.
Babies can tell you a lot about what they’re feeling using body language and baby cues, including whether they’re happy and enjoying play. Play cues include eye contact, smiles and reaching out to you.
Play activities to develop your baby’s emotions
Your baby learns about emotions through sharing experiences with you and watching how you respond to their cues.
Here are play ideas for supporting your baby’s emotional development:
- Make music with your baby – you can sing or make sounds with toys or simple instruments. If this makes your baby smile, you can say, ‘The music makes you happy’.
- Build a tower of soft blocks and knock it down. Notice and respond to how your baby reacts. If your baby looks disappointed, you could say, ‘Oh no, it fell! That’s disappointing’.
- Try messy play with water, mud or wet food. If your baby makes a face, you could say, ‘You don’t like how that feels, do you?’
- Use puppets or toys to explain simple emotions. For example, you can say things like ‘The car is happy because the bus is going for a drive with it’ or ‘The mouse is sad so the cat will give her a cuddle’.
- Play peekaboo. Your baby learns to trust that you’ll reappear and can enjoy looking forward to it.
It’s important to follow your baby’s lead when it comes to play. When you follow your baby’s lead, your baby learns that you notice and respond to them. This builds your connection as well as their confidence and emotional security.
Signs of concern in baby play and emotional development
For most children, development happens in the same order, but skills might develop at different ages or times, even for children in the same family. Differences among children are usually nothing to worry about.
But it’s a good idea to seek advice from your GP or child and family health nurse if:
- your baby regularly turns their face away from you and won’t look into your eyes
- your baby’s feelings are difficult to understand
- your baby’s feelings don’t seem right for the situation
- your baby rarely uses emotional expressions to communicate feelings – for example, they don’t show you when they’re happy or sad.
Check out our baby development trackers for more information about what to expect at 3-12 months and when to get help for development concerns.