Walk in Their Shoes

Open-ended pretend where the child steps bodily into someone else’s role — doctor and patient, shopkeeper and customer, parent and baby — and then, the key move, swaps roles. Playing a part from the inside means producing that person’s words, choices, and feelings, which is perspective-taking with your whole body. A prop or two sets the scene, but the play itself is the point.

  1. Build a simple prop box from household bits — one theme at a time. Doctor: cotton balls, a roll-on bottle for a stethoscope, cloth “bandages,” a notepad, a teddy patient. Shop: clean empty packets, buttons for money, a bag. Home: a doll, a blanket, a bowl and spoon. Open-ended beats licensed-character toys.
  2. Co-plan first (one sentence is plenty). “Who will you be? Who shall I be? Where are we? What happens first?” That tiny plan lifts the play from chaos into a story — and is where self-control lives.
  3. Start with complementary pairs (doctor–patient, shop–customer): two roles that have to coordinate two viewpoints.
  4. Scaffold from inside the role, lightly. Stay a character, not a director: “Doctor, my tummy hurts — what should I do?” Model the register (“that’ll be three coins, please”). Then fade and let the child drive.
  5. Add a small problem to negotiate. “Oh no, the shop’s run out of bread!” Mild obstacles spark the talk and the perspective-taking.
  6. Swap roles — the theory-of-mind core. “Now YOU be the doctor and I’ll be the scared patient.” Then ask the three step-into-them questions: “What would the patient SAY? How would they FEEL? What would they DO next?”

Variation: Who-knows-what twist — “the customer doesn’t know the bread’s gone; how will they find out, and how will they feel?” Real-life rehearsal — play out tomorrow’s dentist visit. Story re-enactment — act out a favourite book, then change the ending.

Requirements

  • Space: A clear floor area; a sheet or table can become a den, shop, or cave
  • Surface: N/A
  • Materials: A few household props grouped by theme in a box or bag; entirely optional — mime and a sheet work
  • Participants: At least 1 adult + 1 child; richest with two or more children
  • Supervision: Adult plays along and lightly scaffolds, then steps back

Rationale & Objective

There is a strong theoretical case that stepping into roles exercises theory of mind: Vygotsky saw make-believe as creating a zone of proximal development where children subordinate impulse to a role’s rules; Leslie (1987) argued the metarepresentation behind pretence (“this banana is a phone”) is the very capacity that later supports representing others’ beliefs; and Harris framed role-play as simulating another’s situation. The empirical picture is more measured and worth stating honestly. Correlations between rich social pretend play and theory of mind are real but modest (Taylor & Carlson, 1997; Connolly & Doyle, 1984), and Lillard et al.’s (2013) influential review concluded the field has often over-claimed a causal role for pretend play — some of the link may even run the other way, with theory of mind enabling richer role-play (Jenkins & Astington, 2000). What targeted role-play does causally improve, in cleaner trials, is emotional self-control (Goldstein & Lerner, 2018) and executive function (Thibodeau et al., 2016). Honest framing — treat “Walk in Their Shoes” as a rich, low-cost, theory-consistent arena for practising perspective-taking, emotion, and self-regulation, not as a guaranteed theory-of-mind trainer; its biggest, best-evidenced payoffs are in language, cooperation, and emotional control, with perspective-taking a likely bonus.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: functional or solitary play; uses props for their real purpose; brief, with no sustained role; plays near other children rather than with them
  • Developing: takes on a role label (“I’m the doctor”) and does one or two role-appropriate actions; a block becomes a phone; needs an adult to keep the thread going; plays mostly their own role
  • Proficient: sustains cooperative role-play for several minutes; uses role-appropriate language and register; sets scenes with words (“pretend it was night-time”); negotiates roles and accepts an in-play problem
  • Advanced: handles role-reversal fluently and voices the other character’s likely thoughts, knowledge, and feelings (“she doesn’t know yet, so she’s still happy”); sustains a story with a problem and resolution; resolves disputes by taking the partner’s view

Safety Notes

  • Watch for joyless, stuck, repetitive replay of a frightening real event — that can be post-traumatic play; gently offer a new outcome and, if it persists, seek professional advice rather than steering it yourself
  • For weapon or fighting themes, set clear limits (pretend only, no real contact, everyone consents) and steer toward helper or rescuer framings rather than banning outright
  • Don’t take over or correct the child’s pretend — adult hijacking removes the agency that makes the play valuable; scaffold, then fade
  • Rotate who gets the powerful role; watch that one child isn’t always assigned the helpless part
  • Children who pretend less, later, or differently (including some autistic children) are showing a difference, not a failure — follow their genuine interests, allow real objects and repetition, and honour functional play as valid rather than drilling “imagination”

Hints

  • Playfulness: let real outings seed the play (after a bus ride or a doctor’s visit); refresh the prop box; let the child be the director day-to-day
  • Sustain interest: introduce a recurring “problem of the day”; rotate themes; add new props slowly
  • Common mistake: adult taking over the plot; over-scripting every line (kills the negotiation and improvisation where perspective-taking happens); skipping the one-sentence plan
  • Limited space/materials: mime needs nothing — an imaginary phone, a sheet that becomes ten places; “freeze and swap” role-reversal needs no props at all
  • Cross-domain: language and narrative (register, story grammar); self-regulation and executive function (planned, rule-governed play is a classic route — see Tools of the Mind); emotional literacy (enacting feelings); cooperation and negotiation
  • Progression: familiar two-person scripts (home, shop) → add a problem to solve → role-reversal → less-familiar or more-fantastical roles → multi-character stories where the child voices others’ hidden knowledge and feelings

Sources

  • Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press
  • Leslie, A. M. (1987). “Pretense and representation: The origins of ’theory of mind.’” Psychological Review, 94(4), 412–426
  • Taylor, M. & Carlson, S. M. (1997). “The relation between individual differences in fantasy and theory of mind.” Child Development, 68(3), 436–455
  • Connolly, J. A. & Doyle, A.-B. (1984). “Relation of social fantasy play to social competence in preschoolers.” Developmental Psychology, 20(5), 797–806
  • Lillard, A. S., Lerner, M. D., Hopkins, E. J., Dore, R. A., Smith, E. D. & Palmquist, C. M. (2013). “The impact of pretend play on children’s development: A review of the evidence.” Psychological Bulletin, 139(1), 1–34
  • Jenkins, J. M. & Astington, J. W. (2000). “Theory of mind and social behavior: Causal models tested in a longitudinal study.” Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 46(2), 203–220
  • Goldstein, T. R. & Lerner, M. D. (2018). “Dramatic pretend play games uniquely improve emotional control in young children.” Developmental Science, 21(4), e12603
  • Smilansky, S. (1968). The Effects of Sociodramatic Play on Disadvantaged Preschool Children. Wiley
  • Bodrova, E. & Leong, D. J. (2007). Tools of the Mind: The Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education (2nd ed.). Pearson
  • UK EYFS — Expressive Arts & Design, Being Imaginative and Expressive ELG (invent, adapt and recount narratives; use props and materials when role-playing characters)
  • CASEL — Social Awareness (perspective-taking, empathy) and Relationship Skills (cooperation); Teaching Strategies GOLD (engages in sociodramatic play)