ABSTRACT
Sibling and peer play make important contributions in the ecology of children’s development. Parents, educators, and researchers have often observed that as siblings and peers play together, they enact a diversity of roles as teachers, doctors, and parents, and in so doing, they try out being helpers, friends, collaborators, or competitors. They challenge each other’s conceptions of reality and construct their own versions of reality. In their play interactions, siblings and peers stimulate and further develop their language, communication, emotional expression, perspective taking, and physical coordination. They initiate, build, and sustain relationships and friendships and learn to contend with conflicts commonly experienced in play (Ashiabi, 2007; Howe & Recchia, 2006; Winn, 2013).
