Michelle Downes

They're working long hours.

They get home.

They have to make the dinner.

And it's such a short time to engage with your child.

But, you know, I see that myself with my three year old.

She wants to play kitchen.

She wants to play restaurant.

She wants to play school.

And, you know, she's delighted when I take that time.

to sit down with her and interact and engage.

And even if it's only five or 10 minutes, that thing you mentioned about control, especially for toddlers, I think, you know, that is quite important because, you know, at age two and age three, you know, they're learning about themselves, they're learning how to regulate their behaviour.

But they have to follow rules all day long.

And it's nice for them to be able to be the narrator and to be able to say we're doing this and you're this character.

Yeah, absolutely.

So this is my PhD student Toby is leading this project and we're delighted we're at time two now.

So we had 105 families come in at time one last year.

And these are families with 20 to 28 month olds who came in for the first visit and they're all coming back in now for time two.

So they're all at a stage where the kids are turning three.

So what we're looking at is we're looking at the development of pretend play and these executive functioning skills and how they develop in the toddler years.

This is something that's not really been explored in really great detail before.