Role play is a great way to talk about scenarios that are troubling your kiddo, better understand what is happening in a situation that you haven’t witnessed, develop empathy for the characters, and brainstorm and practice various possible solutions.
To do role play you can use yourselves and assign different roles or characters. Or you can grab stuffies, trucks, or other toys, and assign them each a role. Or, you can even draw figures to be the roles in your scenario. Once you have the cast of characters, let your child choose which one they want to be, and ask them how the scene starts. Let the scene play out for a while, giving your child the opportunity to show you how it seems from their perspective, and direct it to the place where they are struggling.
For example, if you child is having trouble with a kid in their class, you could set up a scenario where you are your child, and they are the other kid. Let them start out the scene, and play it several times with you reacting in several different ways. Discuss what you’ve both discovered, and then let your child practice how they want to respond next time.
Or, you can just play “School.” Again, let them choose the character they want to be, and direct the scenario. Try different ways of responding as your character(s) and see what comes up.
