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First-time parents often notice their toddler doing the same thing on a loop. Lining up cars. Throwing food off the high chair. Wrapping themselves in a blanket twenty times in a row. It looks repetitive, sometimes frustrating, and often pointless to an adult eye. The repetition is rarely random. In most cases, it is a play schema, and recognising it changes how the behaviour reads.
What it is and why it matters
A play schema is a repeated pattern of behaviour a child returns to during play. The brain runs the same loop in different contexts to make sense of one specific concept, such as trajectory, containment, or order. Recognising schemas helps parents understand that what looks like difficult behaviour is often a child working through a developmental task.
The evidence
The concept comes from Jean Piaget’s early twentieth century work on cognitive development, which proposed that children build understanding by repeatedly testing actions against the world.¹ British researcher Chris Athey expanded this through her Froebel Early Education Project in the 1970s, observing children aged 2 to 6 and documenting patterns across more than 5,000 recorded observations. She defined schemas as patterns of behaviour and thinking that exist beneath the surface of various contents, contexts, and experiences.²
Athey’s research found that when adults engaged with the schemas children were already exploring, those children made measurable cognitive gains over the two-year project compared with control groups.² Subsequent work by Cathy Nutbrown and Frances Atherton extended these findings to children under three, showing that schema-led observation gives caregivers a more accurate picture of what a child is learning than developmental milestones alone.³
Schema theory now sits within the UK’s Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum and aligns closely with the “follow the child” principle in Montessori education.⁴ Most current research identifies nine common schemas, although Athey’s original work catalogued more than 40 patterns.²
The nine schemas most commonly observed in the early years are:
1. Trajectory Throwing, dropping, watching things move.
2. Positioning Lining up, stacking, ordering.
3. Transporting Carrying objects between locations.
4. Rotation Spinning, turning, watching wheels.
5. Enclosing Building boundaries, fencing in toys.
6. Enveloping Wrapping, hiding, covering.
7. Connecting Joining, tying, taping.
8. Orientation Hanging upside down, climbing, lying flat.
9. Transforming Mixing, changing materials.
Strategies for supporting schemas at home
1. Watch for repetition across contexts. A single repeated action with one toy is just play. The same action across different toys, rooms, and days is usually a schema.
2. Match the environment to the schema. A child running a trajectory schema benefits from balls, ramps, and safe throwing zones. A positioning child benefits from nesting bowls, blocks, and small wooden objects. A child running an enveloping schema benefits from blankets, scarves, and boxes. Most homes already have what is needed.
3. Redirect rather than stop. A child throwing food is running a trajectory schema in the wrong context. The aim is to move the schema somewhere appropriate, not shut it down completely.
4. Resist over-teaching. Repetition is the lesson. Sitting beside a child, rather than directing them, gives the brain space to finish what it started.
5. Trust the loop will close. Schemas pass once the concept has been integrated. A child who lines up shoes for two months will eventually walk past them without stopping. The brain has finished the work.
6. Know when to seek advice. Schemas are repetitive by nature, but rigidity around routines, significant distress at change, or repetition that consistently prevents engagement with people may warrant a chat with a GP, paediatrician, or maternal child health nurse.
A real-life example
A toddler keeps tipping every cup of water at the dining table. Asking them to stop has no effect, and moving the cup further away leads to reaching and another spill. Recognising this as a trajectory schema changes the response. The water moves to the back deck, where the child can pour from a small jug into a bucket for as long as they want. At meals, water stays in a smaller closed cup. The schema gets fed in a context that suits it, and dinner becomes calmer for everyone.
A note for first-time parents
Most of what looks like difficult toddler behaviour in the early years is a brain finishing a task. Recognising the schema does not make the repetition shorter, but it does change how parents respond to it. The work stays the same. The frustration drops away.
References
Department for Education (UK). (2024). Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. Crown Copyright.
Piaget, J. (1952). The Origins of Intelligence in Children. International Universities Press.
Athey, C. (2007). Extending Thought in Young Children: A Parent-Teacher Partnership (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Nutbrown, C. and Atherton, F. (2013). Understanding Schemas and Young Children: From Birth to Three. SAGE Publications.
