Pretend play, what should a toddler be doing at age 25 months?

[Littlemiss82]

Hi there,

I was just wondering how advanced a just turned two year olds parented play should be? My DS does the following but not sure it’s really pretend play:

• Loves cars and trains and can spend ages driving them around making vroom vroom noises.
  
• Loves aeroplanes and helicopters and runs around holding them in the air doing the actions and shouts ‘high in sky’
  
• If I’m hoovering or mopping he takes it off me and does the actions.
  
• He walks backgrounds saying ‘beep beep’ pretending he’s a car.
  
• If DS sees fluff on the floor he picks it up and shouts ‘spider, spider’ and pulls a scared face as he knows I’m terrified of them.
  
• If we are playing with toy food or he sees food in a book he pretends to feed me it.
  
• He sometimes uses other objects as a car or train (such as a shoe, or remote) and makes the noises.
  
• I’ve caught him a couple of times pretending to feed his aeroplane.
  

DS doesn’t have a favourite soft/ cuddly toy and not sure if this is normal. I’m a little worried as he has just started nursery and all the other kids his age were pretending to play shops etc which DS never does or pretending to talk on phone (which DS sometimes does, but only really with encouragement). It seems he would rather play with cars or read books.

I was just wondering what everyone else’s two year old is/was like and if I should worry?
He isn’t saying sentances yet, but has around 300 words and is starting to put a few two word phrases together. The only other thing he does that worries me is that he sometimes flaps his hands when really excited.

Thanks in advance everyone xx

[Littlemiss82]

Bump

[Nsbgsyebebdnd]

Sounds very normal to me!

[Littlemiss82]

Great, thank you for your reply

[Rainatnight]

That sounds really normal to me, and he sounds very switched on and empathic if he understands that spiders frighten you!

I think pretend play takes all sorts of different forms. I used to worry that DD wasn't that into 'people-y' pretend play, but she was very into, say, pretending to make cups of tea. And now you can't get her dolly off her and she's always 'taking care' of it. So these things change over time.

Has he had his two year review yet? If I remember correctly, there's a section in the questionnaire on play, and one of the questions was about using one object as another - as your DS does with the remote. So he really sounds on the right track to me.

When you say flapping his hands, do you have some specific worries?

[tinymeteor]

Sounds very normal. Figuring out their own style of play is just part of developing as individuals. For example my eldest has never been into soft toys, doesn't make her toys talk to each other etc. Prefers the kind of play where you sort things out, devise a system, solve a puzzle. There's nothing wrong with her, she's now a very social and gregarious 4yo. She's just inherited her dad's total lack of imagination aptitude for STEM subjects

[Bubbinsmakesthree]

Sounds entirely like like my DS - he's never really gone in for role playing games and that type of play he's more into puzzles, building etc.

[Littlemiss82]

Hi rain,

I worry about autism quite a bit. His cousin has severe Autism and I sometimes worry if he will follow the same path. I just don’t know what I’m looking for, I’m pretty clueless about things like this. Any advice would be great xx