By Richard Cerda, Vice President, JC Toys
Watch a small child with a toy for long enough and you will notice they are not really playing with the object. They are playing with a situation. The car is not a car, it is going somewhere. The animal is not an animal, it is being put to bed. The toy is a prop. The play is a story they are telling themselves.
That is pretend play and it is most of what play looks like between roughly two and five.
It also explains why some toys get used every day and others get pushed under the sofa. The toys that last are the ones that give a child something to act out. The ones that stall are usually the ones that do one thing, do it loudly and leave nothing for the child to decide.
What makes a pretend play toy work
It has to fit their hands
Scale is the quiet reason a toy fails. If a child cannot pick up the pieces, position them and move them where the story needs them to go, they will stop trying. Pieces sized for small hands beat pieces that look impressive in a photograph.
It needs a routine, not a function
A toy with one function gets exhausted quickly. A toy that suggests a routine keeps going, because the routine can be repeated, varied and extended. Feeding, parking, loading, washing, putting to bed. These are sequences a child can run again tomorrow with a small change.
This is the difference between a toy that does something and a toy a child can do something with.
It has to survive being played with properly
Pretend play is not gentle. Things get dropped, stood on, carried outside and posted through gaps in furniture. A set that cannot take that becomes a set of broken pieces. A broken piece in a play set usually ends the whole set rather than just itself.
You have to be able to clean it
Anything a young child plays with will need cleaning. Wipeable surfaces and pieces that can go in water without coming apart are worth more than they sound.
Check the age on the box
Age grades on toys sold in the United States reflect safety testing done for that specific product, usually turning on small parts. Treat the age as a floor rather than a suggestion and check the set rather than just the headline item, because accessories often carry a higher grade than the main piece. Our own age grades are set independently by the testing laboratories, which is why they vary by line. If you want the longer version of how that testing works, we wrote it up in what actually makes a baby doll safe.
Our pretend play sets, grouped by the play they support
Every set below is graded 18 months and up. Grouped by the kind of story they tend to produce, because that is how children choose them.
Everyday places
The Farm Play Set and the Pooch Park dog park set both work the same way, which is that they give a child a place with rules. Animals live somewhere, get fed, get moved. The Happy Town space play set does the same thing with a less everyday setting, which some children prefer precisely because it is further from real life.
Vehicles and movement
This is the largest group and the most used, in our experience. The Baby Car Parking Garage turns on a loop of driving in, parking and driving out again, which is endlessly repeatable. The Baby Train Gift Set, the Baby Wheels multi piece truck set and the Jump and Go multi car set give a child things to load and move. The Animal Cars Carry Case and the Pit Stop carry along set pack down, which matters more than it sounds, because a set that travels gets used in more places.
Water play
The Spinning Sorties bath play shape sorter and the Shark Scoop bath toy storage set move pretend play into the bath, which is often where a reluctant bath becomes a manageable one.
When they are older
The Parfait Collection holds a tea party set, a kitchen chef set and a personal care set, all in real wood, plus the deluxe wood high chair. These are graded 3 and up and they are made for dolls and stuffed animals rather than as standalone toys, so they are a step up rather than a starting point.
Where this meets the dolls
We are known for dolls, so it is worth saying why a doll maker makes a farm set and a car park at all.
The play is the same play. A child feeding a doll and a child feeding a toy animal are doing one thing, which is running a caregiving routine on something they have decided to care about. The doll usually comes first because it is the most direct version of it. The play sets extend the same instinct outward, to a place, a vehicle, a journey.
That is also why these sets tend to end up in the same game as the dolls rather than in a separate one. The doll goes to the farm. The doll rides in the car. If you already have one of our soft body dolls or a La Baby, a play set is usually absorbed into the story that is already running rather than starting a new one.
Questions parents ask
What toys are good for pretend play?
Toys that suggest a routine rather than perform a function. Play sets with a place and a few characters, vehicles that can be loaded and moved, dolls that can be fed and put to bed and everyday household objects, which children reach for constantly. The common thread is that the child decides what happens next.
What are pretend play toys called?
You will see them described as pretend play, imaginative play, role play or dramatic play toys and in early years settings usually as dramatic play. They all describe the same thing, which is a toy used as a prop in a story the child is making up.
What is simple pretend play?
The earliest form, where a child performs a familiar action on an object. Holding a cup to a doll's mouth, putting a toy animal to bed, pushing a car and making the noise. It is simple because it copies one action the child has seen rather than building a longer story. It is usually where pretend play starts.
What are some pretend play ideas?
Start from routines your child already knows rather than inventing a scenario. Mealtimes, bath time, bedtime, going to the shops, visiting the doctor. Give them the props and let them run it. Joining in as a character works better than directing from outside. Describing what is happening out loud gives them language to reuse.
Where we fit
We are a family business and we have been making toys for children for more than thirty years. The dolls are what we are known for. The play sets come from the same place, which is watching what children actually do with things and building for that rather than for the box.
If you want to start somewhere, the Lots to Play collection is the whole range in one place. The La Newborn dolls are where most families start with us.
The toy is never the point. The story the child tells with it is.