Participating does not mean your child will now not discover.” Few experts would argue that children shouldn’t get more time for autonomous play, especially outdoors.

Because playing pretend isn’t just a game.“I think it helps [kids] open up their imaginations,” says Della Allen, who runs Fantasy Kingdom, a Chicago playland, with her husband, Mark. At Fantasy ...

In a behavioral lab, mother-child pairs played together for five minutes trying to solve a 3-D puzzle and then spent five minutes of "pretend play" with toys and stuffed animals.