Where Did All the Pretend Play Go?

It happens quietly, and then all at once. One day, the living room is filled with dragons, explorers, and cardboard castles. The next, it’s… oddly tidy. You peek around and find your child sitting on the couch—reading, drawing, staring out the window—or off riding their bike with a friend, no costume in sight.

As children move from early childhood into the 7–11 age range, pretend play seems to slowly become more sporadic. That world of open-ended, make-believe magic starts to give way to something else. A little more independence. A little more boredom. A new focus on rules, games, teams, books—even solitude.

It’s not that imagination disappears. It just shifts.

Now it might show up in the way they invent new rules for old games in the backyard, or how they narrate entire stories to themselves while building alone in their room. It’s in the books they read obsessively, the layered outfits they assemble, the wild plans they hatch in notebooks or whispered chats with friends. You might notice that the ballerina tutu they wore daily at age five is now reimagined as a flowing skirt thrown over cycling shorts for a day out. The superhero cape might quietly evolve into an explorer’s vest or a tool belt for a bike ride “mission.”

You have your little imagination bundle trying to find an outlet for that creative spirit and there you are, suddenly having chats about bigger plans rather than passing crayons. Researching full on very specific costume requests rather than buying something that looks like Elsa or Batman. But it’s also quietly beautiful. This is the age of transition—not quite little kids anymore, not quite teens. They still want connection and creative space, but on their own terms. Play becomes more about testing the world than pretending it’s something else.

So if you’re wondering where all the pretend play has gone, don’t worry—it hasn’t. It’s just taken a new form, with flashes of the old magic still showing up in the most surprising places.