Play With Dolls Helps Kids Gain Social Skills, Empathy after Covid

Young children may arguably be the most developmentally harmed in the aftermath of “the covid years”.

“Three-quarters of parents are still worried about the impact COVID has had on their child’s early development, leaving a third fearing their children have been held back”, says Newsweek. “A poll of 1,000 parents who have had a baby in the last five years found 46% are concerned about their little one’s speech as a result of masking during the pandemic.

Another 35% are worried about how their child’s emotional intelligence may have been impacted. It also emerged 7 in 10 don’t completely understand what should be expected of their youngster at their age, as they’ve had less interaction with other parents and families themselves.”

Restricting interaction, public mandatory face-covering, and keeping them indoors for months has left many young children feeling uncertain, fearful and isolated. It has also shown that children experienced disturbed sleep, nightmares, poor appetite, agitation, inattention and separation anxiety (Jiao et al., 2020)

Here is one little girl’s compelling, fabulous, powerful, persuasive idea of how to help your child thrive. Wow!

7 minutes.

And this interesting study from Cardiff, Wales, will also be a very useful step to help children 3 through 7 years of age.

Playing with Dolls Has a Purpose

According to this multi-year study from neuroscientists, “playing with dolls can help children consider what other (real) people may say or feel — improving their social skills when they interact with others.”

Because their dolls becomes their early best friends or someone to look after and protect, your child shares ‘conversations’ with them in that context. This will strengthen their vocabulary and help them learn and demonstrate the skills needed to communicate well. 

They found that young children talked more about OTHERS’ thoughts and emotions, a concept known as internal state language (ISL), when playing alone with dolls vs. while playing tablet games.

Children also use more ISL when playing with Playmobil figures compared to a video game (Hashmi et al., 2021).

There was increased brain activity in the part of the brain involved in the development of social and emotional skills.

It didn’t matter if children played with dolls in groups or alone, and it didn’t depend on gender.

Very little boys can internalize a lot from this kind of play, too, especially if they have witnessed healthy nurturing skills in a parent. As they get a bit older, it can transfer to a favorite stuffed animal or rough-housing with dad (or mom) because rough-housing is vital for emotional development.

When children create imaginary worlds and role play with dolls, they eventually internalize messages about others’ thoughts, emotions and feelings.

“This can have positive long-lasting effects on children, such as driving higher rates of social and emotional processing and building social skills like empathy that can become internalized to build and form lifelong habits.”

These skills are really important for interacting with others and navigating a variety of social situations, and is vital for making and sustaining meaningful relationships.

Lastly, please put a little thought into getting a ‘neutral’ doll like one of these here, here, and here in different skin tones/nationalities.

Consider this:

“Once young girls used to play with baby dolls, seeing themselves in the role of the nurturing mother; now they’re often seen playing with Barbie dolls (or Bratz-type dolls), seeing themselves in the place of the doll. And of course, the doll is both pretty and stacked. The pressure is on and stays on.” ~Douglas Wilson

What a Parent Can Do To Help Their Child

Parents can help their children of any age by being there for them face-to-face, hands-on — and especially by not being fearful themselves.

When we are worried about our children’s health, their development, their futures, we must stop projecting out our concerns, and instead of anxiety, make sure that they see the reason for our hope. For starters, ponder in wonder this amazing truth. If we have put our trust in Christ:

He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3–5)

Our greatest parenting task is to be sure our children see our hope and learn about the way they too can have this wonderful assurance in Jesus Christ. Play with dolls is just a tiny step in the healing that can – that must take place.

When you are anxious about health, social skills, current or future needs, yes, we should make sure those needs are met, but we also need to remember and be teaching them the promise in Philippians 4:19: “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

Our children’s ultimate provision is not up to our effort or theirs, but to God’s.

***For the Full Spike Protein Protocol (including NAC) to protect from transmission from the “V” and to help those who took the “V”, go here.

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