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Watch Me Play! - photo of parent watching a child play

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Watch Me Play! Learning from research

An important research paper on Watch Me Play! has just been published in the Journal of Child Psychotherapy. Watch Me Play! is an approach to supporting babies and young children, from birth to around eight years, alongside their parents or carers. It involves a parent setting aside time to watch their child play, following the child’s lead and giving their full attention. Afterwards, the parent reflects with a trained practitioner on what they noticed and how the experience felt.

Watch Me Play! was developed at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust by Dr Jenifer Wakelyn, a child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapist. It is rooted in psychoanalytic infant observation and child development research on attention, joint attention and responsive caregiving.

With growing numbers of children needing emotional support and public services under increasing strain, the need for Watch Me Play! has never been greater. Watch Me Play! offers a low-cost, flexible form of early intervention that can be delivered across health, education and social care settings, including online, and integrated into existing roles. By promoting parental confidence, children’s communication and emotional regulation, and earlier identification of additional needs, it aligns with policy priorities around prevention and relational practice.

The government’s commitment to giving children the best start in life – a central milestone in the Plan for Change – emphasises early intervention and family support. Watch Me Play! represents one promising avenue for translating these ambitions into practical action.

Rather than teaching parents how to play, the approach creates space for parents to notice their child’s interests, signals and capacities. The practitioner’s role is central: by modelling curiosity, slowing the pace and helping parents reflect on small details, practitioners support parents to develop confidence in being with their child.

Research in the United Kingdom

A research paper on Watch Me Play! was funded by What Works for Children’s Social Care and ran from June 2022 to March 2024, led by researchers at the Tavistock and Portman (Dr Eilis Kennedy) and University College London (Professor Vaso Totsika) in collaboration with the Centre for Trials Research at Cardiff University.

Parents often began with doubts, but these lessened as sessions progressed. A central finding was the value of one-to-one time and undivided attention. Parents described how unusual it felt to pause everyday demands and focus only on watching their child play – for many, this became a powerful experience.

Reported outcomes included:

  • improvements in parent-child relationships
  • reduced parental stress
  • increases in children’s social engagement, imagination and speech development

Parents continued using the approach after the study ended, adapting it for siblings and embedding it into family routines. Online delivery proved suitable for families where travel or health made face-to-face work difficult.

Practitioners reported that workshops followed by reflective group discussions were central to developing confidence. Research supports the idea that Watch Me Play! requires careful introduction and ongoing reflection rather than simply following instructions.

Related projects are exploring the approach with families of children with developmental delay, neurodiverse development, and assessment processes for autism. Early findings suggest Watch Me Play! helps parents feel more involved during assessment while providing clinicians with valuable observations.

Internationally, research collaborations in Italy and Japan are evaluating the approach, with Japanese studies attracting significant public interest through national television coverage.

Opportunities for development

The evidence points to several real opportunities, as Watch Me Play! aligns closely with the aims of current government policy.

Watch Me Play! is flexible and low-cost, making it a natural fit for Family Hubs and Start for Life services, where helping parents build confidence and skills is a central aim. It also works well online, which could help reach families in rural areas or those who find it difficult to attend in person.

The programme’s focus on training practitioners ties in well with wider efforts to develop the workforce. Embedding it within continuing professional development could strengthen relationship-building skills among health visitors, early years practitioners and family support workers.

There is also potential value as part of early assessment. By involving parents as active observers of their children’s play, Watch Me Play! may help identify needs earlier while easing parental anxiety – in line with the growing emphasis on involving families as partners in support.

Looking ahead

A new collaborative research project involving the Tavistock and Portman, UCL and Cardiff University aims to deepen understanding of how Watch Me Play! can be integrated into services and evaluated rigorously. Watch Me Play! demonstrates how careful attention to everyday interactions can support both children’s development and parents’ confidence – contributing to the ambition of giving every child the best possible start in life.

Want to learn more?

The Tavistock and Portman runs Watch Me Play! – Tavistock Training for individuals and organisations. Our online short course introduces the principles of the Watch Me Play! approach and the benefits of implementing child-led play into your work with families.

Jenifer Wakelyn’s article ‘The Watch Me Play! approach: learning from practice, training and research’ is in the January edition of Journal of Child Psychotherapy: https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417X.2025.2607587

Watch Me Play! Research: