Parten's stages of play

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Parten’s stages of play are a theory about how children take part in play. It was developed by Mildred Parten Newhall in 1929. She watched American preschoolers aged 2 to 5 during free play (play not tied to survival, production, or profit). She identified six types of play. As children grow and get better at talking with others, and as they have more chances to play with peers, nonsocial play (solitary and parallel) tends to decrease, while social play (associative and cooperative) tends to increase. Many scholars still use Parten’s stages because they help explain how children interact with others, though other ways of classifying play exist too.

There is debate about whether children go through a fixed sequence of stages. For example, some question whether toddlers can really cooperate, or whether solitary play in older kids shows immaturity. Other explanations suggest that play types can be influenced by things like how well the children know each other.