Meaning of children's solitary play with respect to the development of self

Abstract

Parten, M.B. (1932) categorized plays of children in the context of their social development. According to his theory, children begin to play with peers cooperatively as they grow older. However we often observe a child who plays alone even if he/she can play with peers together. In order to understand the meanings of solitary play, I observed plying activities of preschool children. Out of 6 observations of playing children, I chose 2 cases for discussion. The first case was a 5-year-old boy who built blocks to make a tunnel. The second case was a 4-year-old boy making a paper toy with scissors. In both cases, children were talking to themselves, and through their monologues, they corrected their maneuvers, invited new strategies and attained their goal. According to Wallon. H. (1983), children make conversations with the second ego in their mind, and these conversations developed one’s ego. Based on his theory, I assumed that when a child plays alone, he/she may talk to oneself in his/her mind. In this study, I tried to understand the meanings of their monologues while they played alone. It is proposed that inner conversation that I observed in this study might attribute in building their self