ABSTRACT
Young children who in one way or another are handicapped often seem to lack either the desire or the ability to play like other children. Handicapped children often have no desire, or a very limited desire, to explore the unknown. Through ordinary everyday play, children learn that things may 'belong' together because they are functionally complementary or because they are functionally inter-supportive or because they are functionally equivalent though superficially different. Simply by playing with their children, parents re-structure the child's whole activity in a way that the child herself, left to her own devices, could never have done. Some handicapped children have an irrational dislike of anything new and it can be extremely difficult to introduce an unfamiliar toy to them. Parents are all-important: often, simply playing with the toy calmly in front of the child is enough to draw her into the activity.
