3yo play behaviour

[graysor]

I’m curious about how your 3yos play. My dd seems quite different to her peers during play dates.

Dd has never really been interested in any of her toys, even from really young. She is very physical and always prefers running, jumping and climbing to anything else.

When she does play, for example with her dolls house, or her duplo characters she is very fixed in what they do. Always just repeatedly acting out the same short scenario. Usually something she’s seen on a tv programme. She always needs a lot of adult input with this and won’t play independently. She says you do it mummy, you help the doll to talk.

She is very fixed in how she plays. Very different to her friends who seem to explore and experiment with things. She just gets cross if things are done differently or what she perceives is wrong. Eg. She has a tractor trailer and she always puts a toy sheep in. She was furious when her friend put something else in.

She is also very possessive of her things.

Does this sound concerning? Or fairly standard 3yo stuff? Anyone else have one that sounds similar?

I don't really know, but if it helps... my friends DS used to line toy buses and if one got moved he would go mental! I though he had OCD of some sort, but he grew out of that and he hasn't had any other similar customs.

Anyone else got any thoughts on this? I’m really starting to worry about dd’s apparent lack of imagination

It sounds normal to me. I have one who will only like to play out stuff he's seen us do/watched on blaze or paw patrol etc and is not a fan when his sister tries to waltz in and put her horse in his train or similar.
She's the complete opposite and will merrily sit and make up different things with her people/cars. She's always like to play more on her own and he likes us to join in too.

I think it just depends on what kind of child you have!

It sounds normal to me too, DS1 was like this. He never wanted to play imaginary games, unlike DD or DS2. He either wanted to do something physical, or play a game with fixed rules, eg do a jigsaw or build a Lego model by following the instructions (but he wouldn’t want to play with it when it was finished). He’s now 13 and is doing great. He’s still not keen on creative writing in English though!

I was also surprised that my dd seems not to ‘get’ imaginative play. I spent her first 5 years giving away dolls, blocks, tea sets, etc that she kept being given. She loved playing ‘shops’ for instance (because she knew the drill), but if you sat toys in a circle and prompted her to help them interact she’d be . She prefers real human play-pals, always has, always will. She’d take a boring person over an exciting toy anyday.

She does, bizarrely, like painting and slime-making and messy crafts. But she seems to interact with them in a not-imaginative way. She prefers copying or repeating certain pictures or activities.

Truth be told, I’m a bit sad about it because I’m sure creativity forms the basis for many great adult skills like problem-solving. I know it has for me. But it has also been a great lesson for me that she is her own person, with her own strengths and quirks. By the way, dd is 8yo now, and these quirks have strengthened if anything. Looks like it’s just how she is.

Thanks, that’s reassuring that dd isn’t the only one.

Thinking about it, I’ve always been a bit lacking in the imagination/ creative department, so maybe it’s not so surprising dd is similar.

Skittles- that’s interesting about your dd playing shops. My dd likes this too. But she absolutely refuses to play it with any of the toy food we have, she will insist that we get her real food from the fridge!

Not everybody is imaginative or a good story-teller by nature. Perhaps she has a particular strength in another area. Perhaps she’s more artistic - does she make things out of playdough or enjoy painting, for example? What about construction toys where she doesn’t have to use her imagination so much? I know some children who would much rather assemble a marble run, play with a toy workbench or stack Megablocks than play with typical small-world toys.
How would she react to dressing-up clothes? If she had a policeman’s hat or nurse uniform, would she adopt their role?