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How to play with your baby

No curriculum or pricey toys required. What play really is at this age, why "guided or free?" is the wrong fight, and what to do when you run out of ideas.

Short answer: With a baby, play begins as serve-and-return: she makes a sound or a face, you respond, and she responds to you. Your face, voice and hands are enough. As she grows, different kinds of play build different things: guided play helps with early math and shapes, free play with creativity, and an adult in the game with new words.

What counts as play with a baby?

Long before blocks or board games, play is a conversation without words. Your baby sends something out, a coo, a stare, a wriggle, and you send something back: a smile, a sound, a touch. She reacts to your reaction, and the exchange keeps going. Harvard's Center on the Developing Child calls this serve-and-return; in the book I treat it as the engine of play, from the first weeks.

A few seconds of coo-and-smile can touch language, connection and emotional regulation at once, because early on those areas still travel together (see everything is everything). As she grows, your role shifts from answering, to partner in the game, to the one who sets the stage and steps back.

Guided play or free play: which is better?

Researchers including Kathy Hirsh-Pasek describe play as a spectrum: free play (the child decides everything), guided play (she leads while an adult nudges with a goal or question), games with rules, and direct instruction (the adult directs).

The evidence doesn't crown a winner; it sorts the tools by job. A 2022 meta-analysis led by Kelly Skene pooled seventeen studies, around 3,900 children. Guided play beat direct instruction on early math, shapes and task-switching, and beat free play on spatial vocabulary. In a separate study of preschoolers, children learned more new words from stories when a grown-up joined the play afterward. These are small studies; your child is her own case.

So pick by purpose. For counting, shapes or juggling two ideas, add a gentle challenge. For creativity and independence, lay out materials and let her run the show. For new words, get on the floor and join in. As I write in Chapter 5, "The question is not which type of play is correct." It is what you hope to grow in this child, today.

"I don't know how to play with my baby." Where do I start?

Be the toy. Answer her sounds, pause long enough for her to answer back, and repeat whatever makes her laugh.

My twins taught me this at three, at Disneyland. They were too small for most rides. What I remember best is the two of them outside Mickey's House, lining up pebbles by size and inventing a game only they understood. Joyful, absorbing, shared, and free.

To tell whether an activity is real play for your child, the Play Check takes about a minute.

"I'm bored playing with my toddler." Is that a problem?

No. The fiftieth peek-a-boo is not thrilling. You don't have to entertain nonstop: free play is her show, and watching counts. Fold play into chores, with colors, counting and guesses in the grocery aisle, phone in your pocket. And when one kind of play drains you, switch: a game with rules, a small challenge, a picture book in silly voices.

The full why

Play is one of the four invisible forces in Chapter 5 of Big Bang Baby, and it is where the bond between you gets built (see You are the buffer). The full why is in Chapter 5. You can read the Introduction free.

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