A child is said to have a disability when he/she exhibits some limitation in his physical, sensory, cognitive, speech, language, communication or social functions. Such impairments vary in severity, depending on the extent to which core mobility, self-care activities and communication is affected. Statistics have it that about 4% of children in developed countries aged between 0 and 5 years are disabled. The majority of these are boys. Normally, as children develop, they find much joy in playing, either alone or with others. Children’s playing takes different forms, including object, locomotor, pretense, language and socio-dramatic play. For a child with disability, all these forms of play may not be practically possible (Jenvey, 2013).
Children with disabilities have different characteristics, each one unique from the other. Thus, it becomes quite difficult to address them in general, even in this particular topic of play. Researchers have done much study on this topic, mainly looking into the effects of disability in children on play development. They have also attempted to analyze how some physical and social interventions can affect play development in the children (Buchanan & Johnson, 2009).

Play is one vital element in the healthy development of a child. Play is equally important for children with disabilities. First and foremost, it helps create a strong bond between the parent and the child. Secondly, it helps the children to learn in a relaxed environment filled with fun. Play also helps children get attached to the other people surrounding him, say brothers and sisters. Parents should therefore make a serious point of playing with their child so as to improve their relationship with the child and help him through the disability. Many parents have this notion that time spent playing with the children could be used for other worthwhile activities. This mindset should change. Therapists urge parents to give their children that opportunity for play. Most importantly, the parent should play what the child wants, because that is what they are yearning to learn (Doheny, 2010).

As children play, an adult is able to tell how the child understands the physical world, as well as the social world. There are two especially important plays that young children should be encouraged to engage in. These are coordinated symbolic play and replica play (also known as Theme play). Replica play involves children recreating real life situation with toys. For instance, a child may load a toy bus with little dolls, drive the bus to school and let the dolls alight. A child may also load a toy pickup with plastic food, drive it to the market and offload. Such play will instill a sense of sequence in the children, which is vital for their literacy. The adult can creatively apply a number of strategies to increase the effectiveness of replica play. The first thing would probably be to avail high realism toys to the children. These can be sourced from local children toy stores (Frost, Wortham and Reifel, 2001).

The toys should reflect something the child encounters every day so that they can be able to replicate the scenes. Common child experiences include shopping, going to school, house play, snack break at school. These can be replicated with items such as dishes, plastic food, pan, lunch box, and so forth. The adult should arrange them in a creative way for the children because the children themselves may not be able to plan out the theme. Once the child sees the toys, the intended theme will automatically unfold. And that’s the reason for a visually appealing display of the toys to...…visual impairment. It slows down motor development in children, which subsequently affects their mobility and spatial understanding. Spatial development is normally triggered by the child looking, reaching out for objects and grasping them. This becomes difficult for a child with visual impairment. Instead, they use auditory and tactile cues to locate and grasp objects of interest. These however develop at a later stage in the children, thus causing a delay in the child’s engagement in social play. Blind children can be assisted by motion sensors that give out audible signals. These help the children to explore their environment safely. And since they cannot observe how others react non-verbally to various situations, the visually impaired children tend to develop idiosyncratic facial expressions and gestures (Jenvey, 2013).

Deaf children find it difficult to acquire language skills. This is especially true if no one detects such impairment at an early stage, so as to teach them sign language. Children with hearing disabilities are known to lip read so as to get involved in social play with the other children. This may prove to be challenging especially considering their young age. Deaf children also exhibit delays in gesture because they don’t hear the words that accompany such gestures. The Theory of Mind (ToM) performance implies that oral language and signing can help children to communicate with others. We however do not know how this ToM affects social play in children (Jenvey, 2013).

The multiple disabilities in children mentioned above make it quite difficult for play researchers to draw out conclusions about how each disability affects child play. Delays in play are somewhat generalized for all children with disabilities. There is therefore need for further studies on disabled children, to ascertain how each kind of disability affects child play (Jenvey, 2013).