“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
-Albert Einstein

Role-Playing Is Healthy For Children

Einstein was one of the greatest minds of all time and he understood the importance of childhood imagination. When children are allowed to imagine, their minds are more open to what is around them and what they do not understand. As a parent, it is important to encourage your child’s imagination. When children aren’t able to imagine the possible and impossible things in life, they are restricted to only what they know. In a way, raw facts and knowledge becomes like a cage to them. With imagination, children can enjoy the wonders of all things and carry that ability to imagine with them when they grow up.
In this blog, we will discuss why imagination and role-playing are so important to a child. At Rebounderz of Newport News, we encourage imagination above all. At our trampoline park, your little one can imagine themselves as anything they would like.

Imagination Is Healthy For Brain Activity

Imagination is great for your child, not just to excite their creativity, but to strengthen brain activity. When children are allowed to imagine, they are exercising their brain in different ways. For example, if you were to examine the brain activity of a child, real-world events and information flow in the brain upwards in the brain from the occipital to the parietal lobe. However, when a child imagines and exercises their creativity, information is their brain flows downward, from the parietal to the occipital lobe.

Role-Playing Encourages Cooperation

When children role-play, they are able to imagine themselves as something or somewhere else. Better still, role-playing encourages your child to not only imagine to themselves, but imagine with others as well. Playing with other children can teach your child to share their imaginary worlds and encourage others to “see” as they do. This skill is not only powerful, but can be applied in the adult world as well. Being able to share ideas and encourage others to participate in your imagination is an extremely useful skill, especially for adults. As a parent, you can teach your child the best ways to role-play with others and share their creativity.

Sharing Their Creative Stories

It is rare that if a child is imagining something, that they will keep it to themselves. This means they will most likely tell you all about the imaginary friend they have or even the superpower they believe they have. A child is able to view their own world and imagine it as a wonderous, magical place. Being able to share this way of thinking is important because it allows them to express themselves with others. Self-expression is not only healthy, but important for any child to develop their sense of self-worth.

Confidence Building

Role-playing is an important part of childhood because it enables kids to imagine themselves as other things, generally important and powerful people or things. For instance, many children won’t imagine themselves as the loser of a game or an ordinary person. Instead, they will imagine themselves as a superhero or a skilled athlete. Imagination and role-play allows children to imagine themselves as successful and important people. This, obviously, can do a lot for their self-esteem. Better still, if your child has aspirations to be something, imagination can be a fantastic motivator. For instance, if a child wishes to be an astronaut, imagining that they are one can be the motivation they need to train, study, and become anything they want in life.

See Other Points of View

Role-playing can be a valuable tool to teach children to think of others and experience things from another’s point of view. For instance, when a child is pretending to be something, they are able to imagine themselves in that person or things perspective. This ability to imagine something from a different perspective is a useful way to teach your child alternate viewpoints. By being able to understand others and how they think, they can get a better understanding of the world around them. For example, if your child is pretending to be, say, a puppy, they can pretend that they want a treat in order to do tricks. Later, when they aren’t imagining themselves as a dog, they might recall the perspective of being an animal and focus their compassion to your home’s pet. This example isn’t guaranteed, as role-playing doesn’t always mean that children will learn to be compassionate beings by just by pretending a few times, however, it does teach them to think from another’s perspective and think outside of themselves.

Rebounderz of Newport News Encourages Imagination

At Rebounderz, your child can imagine themselves as the fastest ninja, the strongest hero, or the most experienced spy; there are no limits to what your child could imagine themselves here. If you would like to help your child use their creativity, our indoor trampoline park can help. With our trampoline arena, obstacle courses, and our dodgeball courts, your child will have the perfect setting to let their imagination run free!

Visit your local Newport News Rebounderz today!