Does Play Need to Be Different for Children with SEND, or Does It Simply Look Different?

By Aaron Bradbury

There is a question I think we need to ask much more seriously in early childhood: does play need to be different for children with SEND, or might their play simply look different?

That distinction matters.

Too often, we approach children’s play with an existing picture in our minds of what “good” play looks like. Children should be engaged. They should use resources imaginatively. They should interact with other children. They should develop increasingly complex narratives. They should take turns, communicate, cooperate and eventually move from playing alongside others towards playing together.

But what happens when a child’s play does not look like that?

A child might spend a considerable amount of time lining objects up. Another might repeatedly spin the wheels of a toy car rather than pushing it around the floor. A child might pour water from one container to another over and over again. Another might be fascinated by opening and closing a door, watching light move across a surface, making the same sound repeatedly, or moving continuously around the environment.

Our response to these moments tells us something important about how we understand play.

If our first instinct is to redirect the child towards what we believe they should be doing, we need to ask ourselves why. When we take the car and demonstrate how to drive it along the floor, are we extending the child’s play, or are we correcting it? When we encourage a child to stop lining up the animals and begin pretending they are at the zoo, whose play agenda are we following?

There is a danger that we measure children with SEND against a predetermined idea of what play ought to look like and consequently interpret difference as deficit.

Yet, play belongs to the child.

For some children with SEND, play may be highly sensory. It may be repetitive. It may involve movement, sound, pattern or intense engagement with a particular object or experience. Communication within play might happen through gaze, gesture, movement, vocalisation or positioning rather than through spoken language. Some children may actively seek the company of others; others may play alongside them or appear most content when deeply absorbed in their own exploration. None of this automatically makes the play less meaningful.

Indeed, perhaps one of the most important things adults can bring to these moments is curiosity. Instead of beginning with How can I get this child to play differently?, we might begin with What is happening here? What is this child interested in? What might they be exploring? What are they communicating? Where is the pleasure, fascination or meaning for them?

That does not mean adults should never intervene or extend play. Nor does it mean that children with SEND never require additional support. Quite the opposite. Inclusion sometimes requires us to change quite a lot.

But perhaps what needs changing is not necessarily the play. It may be the conditions around the play.

A child might need a quieter space because the environment is overwhelming. Another might benefit from visual communication, additional processing time or resources presented differently. Physical environments may need adapting so that children can access them independently. Some children may need adults who understand their communication particularly well, while others may need an adult who recognises that constantly entering, questioning and redirecting their play is actually disrupting something deeply meaningful.

This shifts our thinking about inclusion. Rather than asking children to fit the play opportunities we have created, we begin asking whether our environments, expectations and pedagogy are flexible enough to accommodate the ways different children play.

There is something important here for how we think about development too. Of course, early childhood professionals observe children carefully and think about how experiences might support development. But play cannot become valuable only when it produces the developmental behaviour adults are looking for. If every moment of play becomes an opportunity to correct, redirect, assess or move the child towards the next expected outcome, we risk losing sight of the child who exists in front of us now.

And perhaps this is especially important for children with SEND.

Their play should not constantly be viewed through the lens of what they cannot yet do compared with somebody else. We can instead notice what they are doing: what captures their curiosity, what brings pleasure, how they communicate, what they repeat, what they avoid, where they feel secure and what they are trying to understand about their world.

The challenge, then, is not to create a separate definition of play for children with SEND. It is to broaden our understanding of play itself.

Because inclusion is not achieved when every child eventually plays in the same way.

It is achieved when every child has the right, space, time, support and freedom to play, and when the adults around them are prepared to recognise that meaningful play does not always look the way we expected it to.

Children with SEND do not necessarily need a different kind of play. They need us to recognise that play can look different, and to create the conditions in which their way of playing is understood, valued and supported.