The Power of Play: A Key Tool for Inclusion and Development

Lyliana Rivera Tirado, EdD

Lean Education, Inc.

Developmental disabilities can significantly impact a child’s ability to communicate, move, and socially interact. These challenges often affect learning and active participation. Yet, one powerful tool continues to show remarkable benefits: play.

Play is more than just fun, it’s therapeutic and educational. Through both structured and free play, all children enhance their motor, cognitive, social, and emotional skills. Sensory activities, role-playing, interactive building games, and cooperative play all help foster communication, self-regulation, and flexible thinking.  By creating environments where children can engage at their own pace and learn from one another, play can promote inclusion, and fuel growth and confidence.

Encouraging play in educational and therapeutic settings, as well as at home, can open doors of opportunity for children with developmental disabilities.

John Lancaster, PhD has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Delta Alpha Pi International Honor Society, an academic honor society founded to recognize high-achieving students with disabilities who are attending colleges (including community colleges) and universities as undergraduate or graduate students.