Dress Ups: Why Do Children Love Characters?

Why do children love characters, and should you let them have free reign into absorbing their favourites?

By Dr Sarah Arachchi, Paediatrician and mum

One of the most incredible things about children is their ability to imagine and explore the world from a different perspective. If we try to experience life through their eyes, we would certainly experience the true magic of life and time would stand still as we become engrossed in the moment.

Children love to challenge the world around them and often do this through imaginative play, which is an important milestone in their development.

When I think of my own childhood, I have fond memories of playing dress up with my friends, imitating characters and pretending to be a few different Superheroes. Adults love dress up just as much as children and maybe that is why we as adults love dressing up at Halloween – because it does remind us of our own childhood and the immense fun we had back then.

I believe that kids love characters because it helps them to explore the world through a different set of eyes with a newfound sense of confidence but also gives them an opportunity to role play with their friends and foster new friendships through play. Imaginary play and dressing up as characters helps children to push and test boundaries through role play and often come up with answers to real life scenarios. I believe it is important to give kids a sense of freedom in absorbing these characters as it can help them to develop speech and language skills as well as social skills which are both an important part of childhood development.

Children are often drawn to certain characters because they identify with that character or the character displays positive attributes such as bravery, intelligence, or kindness, which they strive towards. Parents today can easily bring to life these attributes through the wide range of character clothing in retailers.

As a mum, I love seeing my own kids run around smiling in their favourite Superhero costumes and hearing them shout to each other with confidence and bravado. During our trip to the Gold Coast earlier in the year, I too purchased a Superwoman cape and immediately felt a sense of elation as it symbolised the invisible cape I wore everyday as a woman, a mum and a doctor.

Some parents may be concerned when their children ‘fight’ during their ‘character mode’. I must emphasise that while physical violence in play should never be encouraged, ‘play fighting’ with no physical contact can be a form of developmental play for young children. Yesterday, during my elder son’s Tae-Kwon-Do grading, my younger 3-year-old and a similar aged child he had never met before were playing in a separate room. Whilst they imitated ‘fighting like a ninja’ as my youngest likes to call it, with their toys in their hand, myself and the other mother watched with smiles on our faces as our children bonded and formed a new friendship – both were gentle and did not touch each other in their play and laughed and ran around, pretending and playing a game in their own secret language. It was beautiful and mesmerising to watch. As a parent, it is important to explain to children that we can always ‘fight bad’ in a literal sense by doing good deeds.

We can always encourage children to use their ‘powers’ for good even when their cape comes off and show our kids real life examples of Superheroes who come in all colours, shapes, sizes, forms and abilities. I regularly tell my kids about the healthcare heroes, their teachers, firefighters and police as some examples, to remind them that heroes exist all around us.

I also remind my kids that they too wear an invisible cape, when the Superhero cape comes off and to always remember to use their powers of being honest, kind and caring towards their friends as it is these values with which they can truly change the world around them to make it a better place.