Skip to content
Bump to Bed
Saved

Why play with your baby?

Peekaboo, copying faces and clapping rhymes are more than a bit of fun. Here’s what the research and health guidance say, stage by stage. Numbers link to the sources at the bottom of the page.

From birth

Play is a conversation

  • The American Academy of Pediatrics calls play “brain building”. Its report on play says it helps children learn to plan and manage what they do, helps protect them from the effects of stress, and builds the bond between parent and child.1
  • Researchers at Harvard call the back-and-forth between a baby and a caring adult “serve and return”: your baby coos, points or cries, and you answer. They say these exchanges help build and strengthen connections in your baby’s brain.2
  • Studies suggest babies learn words faster when their parents answer the sounds and gestures they make, soon after they make them, and talk about what the baby is looking at.3

Try this: Follow your baby’s lead. Watch what they look at or do, and answer it. Most baby games are this back-and-forth with a few words and actions that stay the same each time.

  1. 0 to 3 months

    Newborn

    • The NHS suggests singing to your baby to help them tune in to the rhythm of language, and talking back when they make sounds, which teaches early lessons in listening and taking turns.4
    • The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests watching your baby’s face and answering it in the first few months, such as smiling back when they smile.1

    Try this: Get close, face to face, and copy your baby’s sounds and faces. Then pause, and give them a turn.

    Songs to sing to your newborn

  2. 3 to 12 months

    Baby

    • The NHS suggests games like peekaboo and “Round and round the garden”, which it says teach your baby to take turns, pay attention and listen.4
    • In a study of 20 three-month-olds, mothers played a nursery-rhyme game with actions, and sometimes left out the actions or the sound. When the game changed, babies moved less and showed less delight, which suggests they already expected it to go a certain way.5
    • The psychologist Jerome Bruner saw simple, repeated games like peekaboo as early practice for conversation: the same steps each time, with turns for each player.6
    • In a small trial, babies who went to music classes from 6 months, singing and playing along with a parent, later pointed and waved more than babies in classes where music played in the background.7
    • At 10 and 11 months, babies in one study recognised animal noises such as “woof woof” more readily than words such as “doggie”. Words like these are common among babies’ first words.8

    Try this: Play peekaboo, then swap roles: give your baby the cloth and let them do the hiding.

    Play animal sounds

  3. 1 to 3 years

    Toddler

    • The NHS recommends songs and rhymes with actions, like “Pat-a-cake” and “Row, row, row your boat”, and says doing the actions helps your child remember the words.4
    • In a study of toddlers learning to talk, children who began pairing a gesture with a word, such as pointing while saying a word, tended to be the first to start putting two words together.9
    • In a study that recorded families at home, more back-and-forth talk between adults and toddlers at 18 to 24 months was linked with stronger language and thinking skills about 10 years later. The link was with the back-and-forth, not just how many words the adult said.10
    • Looking further ahead, children who knew more nursery rhymes at about 3 were better at hearing the sounds in words, and later did better at reading and spelling.11

    Try this: In a rhyme you both know, stop before the last word or action and let your toddler fill it in.

    Learn some action rhymes

At every stage

Get moving, then put the phone down

  • UK guidance says babies should be active several times a day, especially through play on the floor. For babies who can’t crawl yet, that includes at least 30 minutes of tummy time across the day while they’re awake. Children aged 1 to 5 should be active for at least 3 hours a day, and the guidance says activity helps build relationships, social skills and brain development.12
  • The World Health Organization doesn’t recommend screen time for babies under 1 or for 1-year-olds. It says time spent with a carer reading, telling stories, singing and doing puzzles is very important for development.13 The NHS says playing and listening to stories helps toddlers more than TV when they’re learning to talk.4

Try this: That’s why our games start on your phone and then ask you to put it down. Use the screen to learn the game, then play it face to face.

Find a game to playWhy read to your baby?

Sources

  1. Yogman M, Garner A, Hutchinson J, Hirsh-Pasek K, Golinkoff RM; Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health; Council on Communications and Media. The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development in Young Children. Pediatrics. 2018;142(3):e20182058. doi.org
  2. Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Serve and Return. developingchild.harvard.edu
  3. Tamis-LeMonda CS, Kuchirko Y, Song L. Why Is Infant Language Learning Facilitated by Parental Responsiveness? Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2014;23(2):121–126. doi.org
  4. NHS. Help your baby learn to talk. nhs.uk
  5. Fantasia V, Fasulo A, Costall A, López B. Changing the game: exploring infants’ participation in early play routines. Frontiers in Psychology. 2014;5:522. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  6. Ratner N, Bruner J. Games, social exchange and the acquisition of language. Journal of Child Language. 1978;5(3):391–401. doi.org
  7. Gerry D, Unrau A, Trainor LJ. Active music classes in infancy enhance musical, communicative and social development. Developmental Science. 2012;15(3):398–407. doi.org
  8. Laing CE. A perceptual advantage for onomatopoeia in early word learning: Evidence from eye-tracking. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 2017;161:32–45. doi.org
  9. Iverson JM, Goldin-Meadow S. Gesture paves the way for language development. Psychological Science. 2005;16(5):367–371. doi.org
  10. Gilkerson J, Richards JA, Warren SF, et al. Language Experience in the Second Year of Life and Language Outcomes in Late Childhood. Pediatrics. 2018;142(4):e20174276. doi.org
  11. Bryant PE, Bradley L, Maclean M, Crossland J. Nursery rhymes, phonological skills and reading. Journal of Child Language. 1989;16(2):407–428. doi.org
  12. UK Chief Medical Officers. Physical activity for early years (birth to 5 years): text of the infographic. Department of Health and Social Care, 2019. gov.uk
  13. World Health Organization. To grow up healthy, children need to sit less and play more. 24 April 2019. who.int