ABSTRACT
While the child is playing, he or she is generating a sense of ``what we mean by personal selves''. This play, however, is of a particular kind. Play is a complex subject and includes many different kinds of activities that are typical of various ages. Piaget1 distinguished three main categories of play. The earliest he called ``practice play.'' It is pre-symbolic, involving activities such as banging a rattle, performed for the sake of pleasure. Play of older children is often social and involves rules. We are concerned with a form of play that falls between these two age groups. Piaget called it ``symbolic play.'' It goes on between the ages of approximately 1Ý years and declines after the age of 4; that is, it occurs during that period of life before the individual has reached the stage of knowing an inner reality. Its emergence is not inevitable but depends upon prior periods of parental responsiveness which might appear inconsequential.
