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North London, NHS Foundation Trust
A father and daughter sat on the floor playing with toys.

Watch Me Play! Learning from research

An important research paper on Watch Me Play! has been published in the Journal of Child Psychotherapy.

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 (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:

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.

Looking ahead

A new collaborative research project involving the Tavistock, 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?

We run Watch Me Play! 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.

View our training

Watch Me Play! Research

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.

Other publications:

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