Pretend Play

In week three of my courses, I came across a quote in an article that said "'pretend' play among young children is actually a rehearsal for later activities in life" (Tenorio 1994). This idea has had me thinking about some of my readings and the activities of the children I supervise in a new light. 

For example, the next week we had another reading which described a group of preschool boys pretending to have babies and care for them, and they pretend to be seahorses in order to be able to be the ones having the babies (Pelo). So what then are these young boys rehearsing for? I would think that they are trying to express their knowledge of how to raise a baby and practice for caring for younger siblings and/or even their own children, although they probably don't conscientiously think this. But the part about transforming into seahorses so they can have the babies themselves, what are they rehearsing with this? Are they expressing a want of independence, or just coming up with a creative solution for a problem at hand?

Another example in the Pelo came in the form of a young boy and an even younger girl playing daddy and baby. The teachers dislike that the boy carries the young girl around and manipulates her body as if she is a helpless newborn. They see this as more of a rehearsal in dominance where the pretend play is teaching the girl to be submissive and teaching the boy to be dominant. But what else could they be trying to rehearse or express? Could it be more of an expression by the boy to be a caring father? The children did call the game "daddy and baby," so wouldn't what they are rehearsing be more about age difference and caring for another? One of my classmates asked the question, what if telling the two children not to play that game reinforces in the boy that caring for a child in this way is not what he should be doing? It's interesting to consider that this boy may stop trying to express his paternal instincts later in life due to the negative feedback from this rehearsal.