Stages of play, from solitary to cooperative, and why they are not a ladder
Unoccupied, solitary, onlooker, parallel, associative, cooperative. Where the categories come from, what they describe, and the mistakes people make with them.
Mildred Parten described six categories of social participation in preschool play in 1932: unoccupied, solitary, onlooker, parallel, associative and cooperative. They are useful descriptions of what is happening at a given moment. They are not a developmental ladder, and children move between them throughout childhood.
Well established
That the six arrangements exist and can be reliably observed, and that cooperative play becomes more frequent with age.
Contested
Whether the categories form a genuine developmental sequence. Later work found children of all ages use all of them.
Not known
How much the original findings generalise, given a small 1932 sample from one nursery school population.
- The six categories come from Parten's 1932 study of preschool children in the United States.
- They describe the social arrangement of a moment, not the developmental level of a child.
- Solitary and parallel play remain common and useful long after cooperative play is available.
- Onlooker play is active learning, not exclusion, and is frequently misread by adults.
- The original sample was small, historically situated and not representative of children generally.
Where the categories come from
In 1932 Mildred Parten Newhall published a study of social participation among preschool children, based on repeated observation of children in a nursery school setting. She sorted what she saw into six categories, and those six categories have been in continuous use in early years training ever since.
The reason they have lasted is that they are good descriptions. An observer can apply them quickly and two observers will usually agree. That is a genuine achievement and it explains their persistence in training material almost a century later.
The six, described plainly
| Category | What it looks like | What it is doing |
|---|---|---|
| Unoccupied | Not engaged in anything obvious, drifting, watching nothing in particular | Often transition, rest or a pause between activities |
| Solitary | Playing alone with materials, not attending to others | Deep sustained investigation without the cost of coordination |
| Onlooker | Watching others play, sometimes commenting, not joining | Learning the rules and the roles before attempting entry |
| Parallel | Playing alongside others with similar materials, minimal interaction | Borrowing ideas while keeping control of one's own activity |
| Associative | Interacting, sharing materials, talking, but no shared goal | Practising interaction without the demands of coordination |
| Cooperative | A shared goal, assigned roles, an agreed structure | Negotiation, role maintenance, joint problem solving |
Categories as described by Parten (1932) and in continuous use in early years training since.
Why they are not a ladder
The most common misuse is to read the six as a sequence a child climbs, with cooperative play at the top and solitary play as something to be grown out of. Parten did report that the more social categories were more frequent among the older children she observed, and that finding has held up. What does not follow is that the earlier categories are inferior or that they are left behind.
Later research found children of all ages using all six arrangements, choosing between them depending on the task, the material, the group, their mood and how tired they are. Adults do the same thing. Working alone on something demanding is not a regression to a lower developmental stage; it is an appropriate choice for that task.
The practical consequence is that a five year old who spends a long stretch playing alone is not showing a deficit, and a setting that treats solitary play as a problem to be corrected is applying a misreading.
Onlooker play, the most misread category
A child standing at the edge watching others play looks, to an adult, like a child who has been excluded and needs help. Sometimes that is what it is. Frequently it is not.
Onlooker play is how a child learns the rules of a game in progress, the roles available in it and the personalities involved, before attempting entry. Entry is the hardest social skill in early childhood and the successful strategy is generally to watch, then to do what the group is already doing. A child who is watching is often executing that strategy.
The well meant adult intervention, walking a child over and announcing that they would like to play, frequently makes entry harder, because it interrupts the group and marks the child as needing help. The better intervention, where one is needed, is usually to change the structure rather than to broker the introduction.
Watch before deciding a watching child needs rescuing. Ask whether they look distressed or whether they look busy. Those are different faces.
Parallel play in older children
Parallel play is usually associated with toddlers, and it is prominent then. It does not disappear. Two eight year olds building separately at the same table, glancing at each other's work and borrowing ideas, are in parallel play. Two adults working at the same desk are doing the same thing.
The arrangement has a specific advantage: the social benefits of company without the cognitive cost of coordinating a shared plan. That is a good trade when the individual task is demanding, which is why it recurs at every age.
The limits of a 1932 study
It is worth stating what the original work was. It was a small sample of children in a single nursery school population in the United States in the early 1930s, observed by one researcher, in a setting with the materials and expectations of its time. It contains no information about children in other cultures, other kinds of setting, mixed age groups, or children who are neurodivergent.
None of that makes the categories useless. Descriptive taxonomies can survive their original evidence base, and this one has, because observers keep finding the categories usable. But the categories should be used as vocabulary rather than as a norm, and a child should never be described as being "at" a stage on the basis of them.
What to do with this as an adult
Use the categories to describe what you are watching, not to grade it. Notice which arrangements a child uses most and which they rarely use, because a child who never uses cooperative play in any setting is telling you something worth following up, while a child who often chooses solitary play is telling you very little.
Notice also what the environment permits. Cooperative play needs time, because negotiating a shared fiction takes a while before anything happens. Sessions chopped into short blocks produce associative play and stop there, and adults then conclude the children cannot cooperate, when what they cannot do is cooperate in eleven minutes.
These categories describe moments, not children, and they are not an assessment. A child who is consistently distressed by peer situations, or who is not seeking any shared attention with others, is describing something different, and that belongs with a health visitor, GP or the child's setting.
Common questions
What are the six stages of play?
Unoccupied, solitary, onlooker, parallel, associative and cooperative, as described by Mildred Parten in 1932. They describe the social arrangement of a moment rather than a developmental level a child has reached.
At what age does cooperative play start?
Cooperative play with shared goals and assigned roles becomes more frequent through the preschool years and more reliable around four to five, but there is no age at which it switches on. It also needs time, because negotiating a shared game takes a while before play begins.
Is solitary play a problem?
No. Children and adults of every age choose to work alone when a task is demanding, and solitary play supports deep sustained investigation. It is only worth asking about when a child seems to have no access to shared play in any setting and appears distressed by that.
Why does my child just watch other children?
Onlooker play is how children learn the rules and roles of a game before attempting entry, and entry is the hardest social skill of early childhood. A watching child is often busy rather than excluded. The face to look at is whether they appear distressed.
Do the categories still hold up?
As descriptions, yes; observers apply them reliably. As a developmental ladder, no. Later research found children of all ages using all six arrangements depending on the task, the group and the situation.
How reliable was the original study?
It was a small sample from a single nursery school population in the United States in the early 1930s, observed by one researcher. It says nothing about other cultures, other settings or neurodivergent children, which is a reason to use the categories as vocabulary rather than as a norm.
- Parten, M. B. (1932). Social participation among pre-school children. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 27(3), 243-269.
- Department for Education, Early years foundation stage statutory framework
- Department for Education, Development Matters (non-statutory guidance)
- British Psychological Society
- PubMed, National Library of Medicine
Institution level sources, cited for their public and verifiable character rather than as endorsement of this publication. External links carry nofollow.
Written and reviewed by the editorial team of Kids Play Magazine. Published 25 August 2026. Last reviewed 25 August 2026.
Read next
- Social skills through play
Entry, negotiation and repair, and when an adult should step in.
- Play dates, and what they are actually for
Why two children work better than four.
- Encouraging independent play
What actually builds the capacity to play alone.
One piece of evidence, explained properly, every fortnight
What a piece of research on children and play actually found, what it did not find, and whether it should change anything. No product recommendations, because this publication does not make any.
One sponsored line per issue, marked as sponsored, at a published rate. Nothing else is sold. See newsletter and sponsorship for the rate and for the list of things it cannot buy.