Make-believe play: Wellspring for development of self-regulation

The early childhood years are a crucial time for the development of self-regulation—an array of complex mental capacities that includes impulse and emotion control, self-guidance of thought and behavior, planning, self-reliance, and socially responsible behavior (Bronson, 2000; Kopp, 1991). By the end of the preschool years, well-regulated children can wait for a turn, resist the temptation to grab a desired object from another child, clean up after a play period with little or no adult prompting, willingly help another child or adult with a task, and persist at a challenging activity. Such children also actively try to control negative emotion, often by talking to themselves (“I’ll get a chance soon”) or changing their goals (when one activity isn’t possible, turning to another). As these examples illustrate, self-regulation is central to our conception of what it means to be human—the foundation for choice and decision making, for mastery of higher cognitive processes, and for morality. Self-regulatory capacities are also essential for children to meet the academic and social requirements of school. The human need for complex, flexible regulatory systems that can cope with a wide array of environmental conditions means that the development of self-regulation begins early, takes place over an extended time period, and requires substantia