Stop nagging your toddler to put down the remote control and start paying attention to what they’re doing with it. If they’re holding it to their ear like a phone, they aren’t being weird; they are performing a complex cognitive trick known as object substitution. This isn’t just cute behavior. It is a measurable developmental milestone that signals your child’s brain is actively working, not idling.
Here’s the science backing it up. In a 2019 study published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, researchers Simone Bijvoet-van den Berg and Elena Hoicka found that preschoolers don’t just mimic what adults do. They invent their own pretend uses for everyday items. The study, which involved 45 three- and four-year-olds, showed that kids could distinguish between an adult actually using an object and an adult pretending to use it. When the intent was clear, the children created novel substitutions on their own—actions the adults hadn’t demonstrated or requested. That’s real creativity, not parroting.
But there’s a catch. The same research found no direct link between how much a child engages in this kind of play and their scores on standard measures of divergent thinking or inhibitory control. So, don’t panic if your kid is the quiet one who prefers stacking blocks over turning a colander into a hat. This play is less about predicting future genius and more about understanding how their mind processes the world right now. It’s a window into their cognitive development, not a talent test.
Candice Mottweiler, in her 2013 chapter for the Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination, further clarifies that object substitution is its own strand of imaginative development, separate from role-playing. This means the act of looking at a spoon and seeing a microphone is a distinct skill. It requires a child to hold back their usual action (eating) and perform a different one (talking into a mic). That’s a demanding mental task for a brain that is still wiring itself.
So, what should you do? Stop correcting their "mistakes" and start observing their intent. If you see your child struggling to make an object "work" as something else, that’s where the learning happens. Give them space to figure it out. You don’t need to buy expensive fancy toys. A cardboard box, a wooden spoon, and a banana cost almost nothing and offer endless opportunities for this kind of cognitive exercise. Let them be chaotic. Let them be loud. Let them turn the vacuum cleaner into a spaceship. That’s where the real thinking is happening.