Pretend Toys Aren’t Just For Little Kids. The Big Ones Still Love To Play, Too

Pretend play changes so much as kids grow. When they’re babies, barely able to sit up or walk, we hand them baby dolls and little push lawn mowers and tea sets. When they’re toddlers, we upgrade to full pretend kitchen sets and playhouses and miniature figurines, and by the time we have elementary schoolers, people are posting “free kitchen, must pick up” on Facebook Marketplace.

That gorgeous pretend set you spent hours putting together on Christmas Eve? All of those wooden Melissa & Doug velcro fruit sets? The boxes of American Girl dolls and accessories? They all end up as freebies for neighbors or being resold on Mercari before your kids even become tweens.

And I’m here to tell you — big kids still want to play with this stuff.

Growing up is weird. But growing up doesn’t mean you lose your imagination or your sense of play or your wonder. Honestly, with the right resources — like books and free time for your brain to wander and creative outlets — I feel like all of our imaginations just get brighter and better. So why are we taking away all of the pretend toys the minute we deem our kids “too big” for them? Why are we tossing dollhouses to the curb as soon as we stop seeing our toddlers bang the little people on the roof?

I’ve always thought that pretend toys and miniatures are great for toddlers, but even better for big kids. Toddlers enjoy handing you a plastic frying pan with a plastic steak inside and saying, “Eat it, I made it!” But a big kid? A big kid will create a whole backstory. They will pretend to be a grouchy head chef at a restaurant. They will dig through the pretend food pieces and look specifically for the grilled cheese toy because that’s what you ordered. When you swipe your pretend plastic card, they will tell you the transaction didn’t go through and accuse you of trying to steal from them and insist you pay off what you owe by washing dishes.

Their imaginations are bigger and bolder. They have been inspired by movies and books and games. They have real-life experiences to mimic beyond watching you in the kitchen.

A week or so ago, driving home from school, my 11-year-old asked me, “Tonight before bed, will you play Barbies with me?” I couldn’t contain my excitement. She has two little sisters who are still massively into Barbies, and I was incredibly delighted by her wanting to rekindle that magic for herself.

But playing Barbies with a tween isn’t the same as playing Barbies with my 3-year-old or 6-year-old. Instead, we dressed the Barbies and set them up in scenes inside the Dreamhouse. We moved some of the play sets around, we created epic character backstories for why one Barbie was asleep on the couch while the other Barbies were baking cookies in the kitchen. We actually put the impossibly tiny Barbie shoes on their perfectly arched feet, something I don’t think my 3-year-old has ever done with a Barbie.

I was a kid who kept my dolls and my Barbies and my miniatures for a lot longer than I was “supposed” to. I was in high school, a wooden cradle still in the corner of my room. Every now and then, I’d pick up a baby doll and rock it, change its clothes, carry it around the room.

I loved rearranging my doll house, setting up miniature furniture and putting the dolls into little scenes inside.

And honestly, all of that pretend play was a good outlet. Not only is play, in general, good for us, but the Association for Play Therapy shares that play encourages kids to self-regulate their emotions, to boost their own egos, and work out their own feelings they may not be able to communicate. Maybe big kids are wanting to escape the real world pressures they’re facing by reverting back to something they loved as a child. Maybe they want the creative outlet of storytelling through dollhouse families and their accessories. Maybe they want to recreate situations they’ve found themselves in with dress-up and props to help them feel more confident.

But above all, I think all kids just want to play. We call it a “hobby” when an adult is into model trains or filming elaborate stop-motion Instagram videos or cosplaying as superheroes at conventions, but we try and argue that our 8-year-olds and our 12-year-olds and our 17-year-olds are too old for “toys.”

Don’t give away the pretend doctor set just yet. Maybe just store it in the playroom or bring it out and remind your tween how much they loved it. Whether they have younger siblings or not, there’s something in all of us that makes us pick up a pretend phone and hold it to our ear or pick up a Barbie and prop her up in her grocery store play set like she’s about to weigh a bag of lemons. We all have play in us, forever and ever, and encouraging that in your big kids is always going to be helpful.

My 11-year-old told me she wanted a dollhouse for Christmas. “Like one just for me to set up inside with fancy furniture and create scenes,” she said.

I already ordered it.