Executive function grows along a long arc. Infants borrow calm from a responsive adult, toddlers practice waiting inside their play, and preschoolers hold a plan in mind during games they invent. Play and executive function belong in one sentence because no child arrives with these skills already built. Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child compares them to an air traffic control system in the brain in its guide to executive function. Cresthill Academy is an early-childhood education and child-care provider, and what follows is that arc, chapter by chapter.
Key Takeaways
- Co-regulation comes first: Zero to Three notes that infants rely on responsive relationships for calm, and that strong early co-regulation is connected to how well a child later develops coping strategies, emotional awareness, and resilience.
- Teachers often notice it first: Harvard's Center on the Developing Child warns that trouble controlling impulses, focusing attention, and following instructions is frequently mislabeled as bad behavior instead of a developing skill.
- Play buffers stress while it builds skill: The American Academy of Pediatrics notes that high amounts of play are associated with low cortisol levels and that play with nurturing caregivers may buffer adversity.
Why Did Pediatricians Start Writing Prescriptions for Play?
Because play had been quietly squeezed out of early childhood. The American Academy of Pediatrics published its clinical report The Power of Play in Pediatrics in 2018 and reaffirmed it in January 2025, and the report states plainly that play is not frivolous and that it enhances brain structure and function.
What the report pushed back on will sound familiar if you have ever been handed a worksheet packet for a four-year-old. AAP flagged an increasing societal focus on academic readiness that moved programs toward structured, results-oriented activities, with a corresponding decrease in playful learning. Zero to Three’s position for the first three years is blunter: play is learning. Guided play counts too, and the report is careful about the reason, since an adult can set out materials and ask good questions while the child keeps agency over where the game goes. Our guide to the benefits of play-based learning walks through what that balance looks like across a day.
Here is our position, and we will defend it. The most useful line in that report is the one treating executive function as the process of learning rather than its content, the capacity to pursue a goal and ignore distractions. Content is easy to test and easy to drill. Process has to be practiced, and practice needs something a child actually cares about finishing. Letters come readily to a child who can hold a goal in mind through frustration; memorized letters do not supply that machinery on their own. That comparison sits at the center of our look at worksheets versus play-based activities. Play came to be taken this seriously because the evidence places it inside the machinery of learning itself.
Where the Story Starts: Co-Regulation in the First Year
Self-regulation begins in someone else’s arms. Zero to Three describes self-regulation as the brain’s ability to manage and control the rest of the body and mind, developing outward from basic bodily functions as neural connections strengthen. A newborn can do very little of that alone. Adults supply what a baby cannot yet manage, and that is co-regulation in practice: your steady voice, your slower breathing, the rocking that outlasts the crying.
Why the first year carries so much weight. Zero to Three notes that infants rely on responsive relationships for calm, and that strong early co-regulation is connected to how well a child later develops coping strategies, emotional awareness, and resilience. Connected is the honest word there. A responsive start is no guarantee of any particular outcome years later, and we would rather say that plainly than oversell a finding. Still, the direction of the evidence is consistent enough that responsive, unhurried caregiving is what we are most confident recommending for a baby. If the whole enterprise feels opaque some days, we wrote about why it is so hard to know what to do with your baby.
Play belongs in this chapter already, in its smallest form. Peekaboo asks a baby to hold an expectation and wait for it to resolve. Rolling a ball back asks her to notice that turns exist. None of it looks like skill-building, and all of it is the first rehearsal of holding something in mind. Families weighing group care during this stretch often want to know what changes as the months pass, and our comparison of infant and toddler daycare covers it. Borrowed calm is the first chapter of self-control, and no baby skips it.
How Does a Toddler Move From Borrowed Calm to Self-Control?
Gradually, and with an adult still within reach. Toddlers start carrying a little more of the load themselves, and play is where the reps happen: waiting for the bucket, keeping a plan for a tower in mind, recovering when the tower comes down.
Zero to Three’s account of self-regulation developing outward from basic bodily functions helps explain why this stage is so loud. A toddler’s body has more control than his feelings do. Grown-ups keep supplying what he cannot yet manage, which means the collapse in the block corner is ordinary developmental work in progress. Knowing which kind of storm you are in helps, and our piece on tantrums versus sensory meltdowns sorts the two.
Waiting Is a Skill, and Play Is Where It Gets Practiced
AAP defines executive functioning for parents as working memory, flexible thinking, and self-regulation, and notes children use those skills to learn, solve problems, follow directions, and pay attention on its Power of Play page. Watch a toddler beside another toddler at a water table and all three get a workout. He tracks what he is doing, notices what she is doing, holds off on grabbing, then adjusts when the cup he wanted disappears. Side-by-side play accomplishes far more than it appears to, which is the argument in our post on parallel play.
What helps most at home is unglamorous. Narrate the wait instead of removing it: “You want the red cup. She is using it. I will sit here with you until it is your turn.” Heard again and again, that kind of language can shape how a child eventually talks to himself. Keep the waits short and the support close, and expect the skill to look solid on Tuesday and vanish on Wednesday. A toddler’s self-control is real and unreliable at the same time, and both halves of that sentence are normal.
What Changes When a Preschooler Starts Directing Her Own Games?
Almost everything gets harder, in a productive way. A preschooler running her own game holds a role in mind, follows rules nobody wrote down, and rebuilds the story when a friend adds a dragon. Pretend play is demanding cognitive work.
The American Academy of Pediatrics puts developmentally appropriate play with parents and peers at the center of the social-emotional, cognitive, language, and self-regulation skills that build executive function, and calls those skills foundational for school readiness and academic success. That second point answers the question most parents are actually asking at 10pm. Play is the academic preparation, and the evidence AAP assembled in The Power of Play is what we would hand a relative who wants to see flashcards instead.
Why Pretend Play Is Harder Than It Looks
Holding a role means inhibiting yourself. A child playing the doctor cannot snatch the toy stethoscope from the patient, because the doctor would not do that. Rules nobody wrote down still have to be tracked, negotiated, and repaired when someone breaks them. A copy of the report shared by the FPG Child Development Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill notes that the social skills inside playful learning are what let children listen to directions, pay attention, and stay with a task without constant supervision. Imagination is load-bearing, and our guide to raising a creative child takes that idea further.
Your job in this chapter is smaller than it feels. Take a role when you are invited, then let her assign it. Ask a question that opens the plot (“what happens if the bridge breaks?”) and resist finishing the thought for her. When the game stalls, wait longer than is comfortable before rescuing it, because the repair is the skill she is building. Ideas worth stealing sit in our roundup of play-based preschool activities. A preschooler who can sustain a game she invented with two friends is practicing a good deal of what school will later ask of her, negotiating, holding an idea in mind, staying with something past the first difficulty.
Why Does Outdoor Time Move the Arc Along Faster?
Because outside hands a child more variables and fewer instructions. A stick has no single correct use, the ground is uneven, and weather keeps changing the problem. Open-ended settings give working memory and flexible thinking something real to chew on.
Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child makes the design point directly: programs can build environments that support these skills in the places where children live, learn, grow, and play. Read that as a claim about yards and rooms as well as about people. A yard with loose parts, water, and things to climb generates problems that a toy with one function never will. Here is what we would not claim, though. No source in front of us sets a dose, so anyone quoting you an exact number of outdoor minutes for executive function has gone past the evidence.
Backyards qualify. A bin of pinecones, acorns, and dirt is a laboratory, which is the premise behind our sensory bins built from backyard finds. When everyone needs somewhere new, our parent’s guide to outdoor fun in East Hanover has options. Bring less equipment than you think you need, then stay out of the plot. Variable ground, open materials, and unhurried time are what turn ordinary outdoor play into a workout for a child’s planning system.
What Does the Stress Chapter Add to the Story?
A physiological layer. The AAP notes that high amounts of play are associated with low cortisol levels, and that play supported by nurturing caregivers may buffer adversity and reduce toxic stress. Play appears to act on the stress system while it builds skill.
One study the AAP highlights is worth knowing by heart. Three- and four-year-olds anxious about starting preschool were twice as relieved of stress after 15 minutes of play with teachers or peers, compared with children who listened to a teacher read a story, as reported by HealthyChildren.org. We would read that result carefully. Association is not proof, and a single comparison is not a law, yet the finding still points somewhere genuinely useful for the first hard weeks of a new classroom. If that is your September, our piece on separation anxiety is the companion read.
The warning attached to that finding matters even more than the finding. AAP is explicit that when play and safe, stable, nurturing relationships are both missing, toxic stress can disrupt the development of executive function and the learning of prosocial behavior. Relationship is doing work alongside the play, the adult who knows your child seems to be part of what makes the playing count, not merely a supervisor of it. Feelings and skills grow on the same track, which is the argument in our overview of social-emotional learning. Play calms a young child and builds him at the same time, and the adult in the room is part of that mechanism.
Why Do Teachers Notice These Skills Before Anyone Else?
Because these skills show up first as behavior, and teachers watch behavior all day long. Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child notes that teachers are often the first adults to spot a child’s difficulty with impulse control, attention, organization, and following instructions.
What happens next decides a great deal. Harvard’s InBrief on executive function warns that mislabeling those difficulties as bad behavior can lead to disrupted classrooms and preventable expulsions. Preventable is the word we would sit with. A three-year-old who bolts during cleanup may be showing you a skill that has not arrived yet rather than a choice to defy you, and where that is what is happening, the response that makes sense is teaching, patiently and alongside him, rather than correction. Good classrooms teach the missing skill: fewer steps, a visual cue, a rehearsal before the transition. Our walkthrough of a play-based preschool day shows where that teaching fits.
When you are visiting programs, listen for how the adults talk about hard behavior. Ask who is with the children at every point in the day, how small the groups are, and how long the teachers have been there. Watch whether someone answers a child who is not asking loudly. Notice whether the child who struggles at circle time gets coached or gets removed. More observable signals like these are collected in our guide to judging daycare quality. A program that reads impulse trouble as an unfinished skill will teach your child more than one that reads it as defiance.
How Does the Arc Show Up in a Real Preschool Day?
What tends to matter most are unhurried stretches of play, small groups, adults who narrate and ask more than they direct, and regular time outdoors. Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child treats settings where children play as designed environments, which makes each of those choices an intervention.
Time is the part families underestimate. A plan needs room to be made, tested, abandoned, and rebuilt, and a play block that keeps getting cut short teaches a child to stop investing in plans at all. Small groups matter for a different reason, since consistent, familiar adults are the ones who notice the quiet child stuck at the puzzle for a while without asking for help. Guided play, in AAP’s framing, keeps the child’s agency while an adult adds a question or a new material, which is the whole difference between a teacher joining a game and a teacher taking it over.
Home has a version of all of this. Where you can, protect a stretch of unhurried, uninterrupted time, and give boredom a little room to do its work before you step in with a suggestion. Our guide to fostering independent play before preschool has the practical how, and our piece on emotional readiness covers what those first weeks tend to ask of a child. Unhurried stretches of time, familiar adults, and regular outdoor play tend to do a good deal of the teaching on their own, long before anyone opens a workbook.
What Chapter Is Your Child In Right Now?
Somewhere in a slow unfolding, borrowing calm from a grown-up, then practicing control with help close by, then, in time, running her own games. Each chapter asks something different of you, and a child still living in the first one is not behind.
The infant chapter. Your baby’s regulation is your regulation for now, so respond quickly, keep the routines boring, and let simple back-and-forth games carry the load. Zero to Three connects strong early co-regulation with the coping strategies, emotional awareness, and resilience that come later.
The toddler chapter. Look for short waits survived, plans held for a little while, recoveries that arrive faster than they used to. Stay physically close, name the feeling, and keep the demand small enough to succeed at. Stage-by-stage detail sits in our roundup of developmental milestones from birth to five.
The preschool chapter. Watch for a game she invents and sustains, a role she keeps in character, a rule she negotiates out loud with a friend. Those moments are the working memory, flexible thinking, and self-regulation that AAP calls foundational for school readiness, and they are visible without any test. If kindergarten is on your horizon, our look at readiness signs lists what to watch for. Find your child’s chapter, support that one well, and let the next chapter arrive on its own schedule.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2010 |
| Locations | 8 New Jersey campuses across East Hanover, Harrison, Hoboken, Lyndhurst, Paramus, and Parsippany-Troy Hills |
| Curriculum | EsteamED Curriculum® (proprietary) |
| Age range served | 6 weeks – 5 years |
| Programs | Infants, Toddlers, Preschool |
| Hours | Monday-Friday, open 7:00 AM-7:30 AM, close 6:00 PM-7:00 PM (varies by campus) |
| Languages introduced | American Sign Language and Spanish at every campus; Mandarin immersion at the Hoboken campuses |
| Tagline | Exceptional Early Education™ |
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Did Pediatricians Start Writing Prescriptions for Play? Because play had been quietly squeezed out of early childhood. The American Academy of Pediatrics published its clinical report The Power of Play in Pediatrics in 2018 and reaffirmed it in January 2025, and the report states plainly that play is not frivolous and that it enhances brain structure and function.
How Does a Toddler Move From Borrowed Calm to Self-Control? Gradually, and with an adult still within reach. Toddlers start carrying a little more of the load themselves, and play is where the reps happen: waiting for the bucket, keeping a plan for a tower in mind, recovering when the tower comes down.
What Changes When a Preschooler Starts Directing Her Own Games? Almost everything gets harder, in a productive way. A preschooler running her own game holds a role in mind, follows rules nobody wrote down, and rebuilds the story when a friend adds a dragon. Pretend play is demanding cognitive work.
Why Does Outdoor Time Move the Arc Along Faster? Because outside hands a child more variables and fewer instructions. A stick has no single correct use, the ground is uneven, and weather keeps changing the problem. Open-ended settings give working memory and flexible thinking something real to chew on.
What Does the Stress Chapter Add to the Story? A physiological layer. The AAP notes that high amounts of play are associated with low cortisol levels, and that play supported by nurturing caregivers may buffer adversity and reduce toxic stress. Play appears to act on the stress system while it builds skill.
