Promoting inclusion for young children with special needs on playgrounds

Playgrounds are underutilized for enhancing the social development of young children with special needs. The unstructured fast-paced nature of play in this setting necessitates using teacher-mediated interventions to enhance inclusion of children with special needs in cooperative interactions with their typically developing peers. In this review, we discuss the importance of moving classroom centers, activities, and materials onto playgrounds. This sets the stage for teachers to implement interventions to foster cooperative interactions between young children with and without special needs and increases opportunities for generalization. Children who exhibit aggressive behaviors may have significant difficulty engaging in social interactions on playgrounds; hence, interventions to foster their social skills are presented. Despite barriers to implementation, playground interventions need to be incorporated into educational plans, and research determining whether interventions improve social skills and acceptance of children with special needs is required.