Cooperative play: how young children build friendships 

Around age 4, your child may begin cooperative play, though it may not look very cooperative at first 🙃 One minute they and a friend are happily building a tower together and the next, they’re arguing over where the bridge should go. Working toward a shared goal and experiencing conflict give your child a chance to practice social skills like compromise, communication, and problem solving. 

What is cooperative play?

Cooperative play is when children play together with a shared interest in the activity and each other. For example, they may build a sand castle, play “school,” or push each other in a wagon. 

Cooperative play involves understanding another’s perspective and sharing, which can be a lot of effort for young children. Even when there’s conflict, your child gets a lot out of figuring out how to play with another child. Research shows that children who played cooperatively during a math activity learned more than other pairs of children. This is likely because cooperating encourages talking through problems and more experimentation.

How can you help your child play cooperatively?

As playmates, other children provide more chances for learning how to negotiate and compromise than you do. You aren’t likely to overrule your child if they insist on being the captain in a game of “firefighters”—and it might feel inauthentic if you did. But even as the adult, there are ways to support your child as they learn the skills of cooperative play: 

Model cooperation skills as they happen

Call out the moments when you share, negotiate, or compromise during play with your child. They—and you—probably don’t notice how often this happens. For example, if you’re drawing together and your child asks for the color you’re using, you could say, “Sure, I’ll share the blue with you! Coloring together means we need to share.” 

Encourage cooperation with the right activities

Playing with friends in an open-ended and exploratory way gives your child a chance to practice cooperative skills. This can take place through preschool, playdates, or time with neighbors or cousins. To encourage shared goals, try putting out toys and materials that prompt working together, like the Wooden Modular Village & Pathways. Your child and their friend may work together to decide how to arrange the village and who will be each character.

Pause before intervening in a disagreement

Sometimes arguments get loud before they get settled. If a conflict comes up, wait to see if your child and their friend can find a solution on their own. You may be surprised at what they come up with. Their solution may not always seem fair to you, but the important thing is that it works for them. 

If the argument leads to tears or mean words, it’s probably time to step in. Start by stating what you see, then encourage them to think about solutions: “It sounds like you both want to push Alia in the swing. I wonder how we can solve this problem. Do you have any ideas?” You could also try giving them a break from problem-solving—a snack or a story might be just what they need to reset.

Talk about playtime successes and challenges

Your child is at an age where, with your help, they can think back on what happened and envision how they could do things differently next time. For example, if your child and their friend are building with the Energy-In-Motion Wooden Ball Ramps, point out when they worked well together: “I heard you and Thea compromise on how high you wanted your ramps to be—you really figured that out together. How did you feel about that?” 

You can also talk about when things got tricky: “You seemed frustrated when Thea couldn’t get the ramps to balance. You have a lot more practice with those than she does. What could you do next time if that happens again?” 

Read more about the research

Goodvin R., Romdall L. (2013). Associations of Mother–Child Reminiscing about Negative Past Events, Coping, and Self-Concept in Early Childhood. Infant and Child Development, 22:4, 383-400.

Howes, C. (1983). Patterns of friendship. Child Development, 54, 1041-1053.

Howes, C. & Matheson, C. C. (1992). Sequences in the development of competent play with peers: Social and social pretend play. Developmental Psychology, 28, 961-974. 

Zippert, E. L., Eason, S. H., Marshall, S., & Ramani, G. B. (2019). Preschool children’s math exploration during play with peers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 65, 101072.

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