By participating in their children's imaginative play or pretending, parents may be able to understand better their children's feelings, resolve parent-child conflicts, communicate parental values, and build parent-child relationships based on mutual respect. Many people seem to believe that pretending appears automatically in young children, that it represents a way to escape reality, and that it is easy. These beliefs are false. Far from being a retreat from reality, imaginative play is a crucial mechanism by which children survive the onslaught of new information. Pretending is an essentially social, learned skill by which children cope with reality. For children between the ages of 2 and 6, imaginative play is a major vehicle for developing social and language skills as well as an understanding of personal relationships. Pretending helps children recognize the dimensions of new facts they have discovered about life, some of which are exciting, some frightening. It is a form of thinking that helps children deal with the complex and difficult intellectual task of distinguishing between the real and the imaginary. Recent research indicates that high levels of pretending are associated with cooperativeness, self control, and intelligence. This research also demonstrates that helping children elaborate their pretending has the effect of increasing their social, emotional, and intellectual development. (Author/RH)