Practical, evidence-led guidance for families navigating shared play between a child with special educational needs or disabilities and a typically developing sibling, without a screen in sight.
The short answer, for any parent who needs it quickly: open-ended, tactile play with simple physical materials, wooden stacking sets, skittles, sand trays, traditional board games with flexible rules, tends to be the most reliable common ground for siblings at different developmental levels. These activities have no single correct pace, no screen-imposed tempo, and no soundtrack that overwhelms a sensitive nervous system. Both children can engage authentically, one stacking blocks as high as they dare, the other sorting by colour or simply running a hand along the grain of the wood, without either child's experience being the wrong version.
That said, it can feel genuinely hard. Parents of siblings where one child has SEND often describe a quiet guilt that orbits both directions: worrying that the typically developing child is missing out, and worrying that the child with SEND is being overshadowed or managed rather than genuinely included. Both concerns are legitimate. The good news is that research on sibling relationships and inclusive play consistently shows that when the activity itself is flexible enough, children find their own negotiated version of the game, and that negotiation is where much of the developmental gold lies.
What the Research Tells Us
Psychologist Jaak Panksepp identified play as one of the primary emotional systems shared across all mammalian brains, not dependent on ability level. Lev Vygotsky's concept of the Zone of Proximal Development reminds us that a more capable sibling naturally scaffolds the learning of a less experienced one, without a parent needing to engineer every moment. This scaffolding works best when the task itself has enough open structure to allow it.
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff's extensive work on playful learning demonstrates that the richest developmental outcomes arise from play that is child-directed, iterative, and low-stakes. These qualities are precisely what makes an activity accessible across a wide ability range. When a child with SEND can set their own pace and the rules bend without drama, anxiety drops and engagement rises. When the typically developing sibling is not locked into a predetermined winner-takes-all structure, they are free to follow their sibling's lead, which itself builds empathy, patience, and flexible thinking.
Jeffrey Trawick-Smith's TIMPANI toy study found that certain toy types consistently produced the highest quality play across diverse groups of children, including those with developmental differences. Simple, physically engaging toys with multiple uses came out well ahead of single-function electronic toys. The texture, weight, and unpredictability of physical materials demand and reward attention in a way that a screen, which controls its own pacing, cannot replicate.
Wooden toys offer something specific that plastic and electronic alternatives rarely can: sensory honesty. The weight of a wooden block in the hand, the sound it makes when it meets another, the visible grain and warmth of the surface, these qualities provide rich, predictable sensory feedback that many children with SEND find genuinely regulating. There is no sudden noise, no flashing light, no unexpected digital voice. The child knows what the material will do, and that predictability reduces the cognitive load needed just to tolerate being in the play space.
For the typically developing sibling, these same qualities make for satisfying, endlessly replayable play. A set of wooden skittles is just as interesting to a five-year-old who can count the pins as it is to a two-year-old who wants to knock them over for the sound and the drama of it. Both children are in the game. Neither is waiting for the other to catch up.
Explore Jaques London's collection of wooden toys, crafted for open-ended, sensory-rich play across a wide developmental rangeCertain toy formats are particularly well suited to mixed-ability sibling play because they offer what designers sometimes call a wide entry door: a child can begin at almost any level and still be meaningfully engaged. Consider the following categories.
The structure of an activity matters almost as much as the materials. Here are several formats that work reliably in mixed-ability sibling contexts, each requiring minimal adult preparation.
The most important principle here comes not from research but from children themselves: nobody wants to be the one who gets the special rules. When adaptations are visible and asymmetrical, the child with SEND often feels more different, not less. The remedy is to build flexibility into the game for everyone. If a child with motor difficulties needs a shorter throwing distance, make varied distances part of the game for all players. If a child with cognitive differences benefits from picture-based cues rather than verbal instructions, create picture cards that everyone uses. Frame the variation as a feature of the game, not an accommodation for one player.
A Note on Dignity and Play
Alison Gopnik's research on children as learners emphasises that children are acutely sensitive to being condescended to or managed. A child with SEND who senses that rules are being bent specifically for them will often disengage, not because they cannot play, but because the implicit message about their competence is demoralising. Designing for universal flexibility protects both children's sense of agency.
Stuart Brown's research on play across the lifespan, and Peter Gray's work on self-directed play, both point to the same conclusion: adult intervention, however well-intentioned, frequently disrupts the very negotiation that makes sibling play developmentally valuable. The parent's most useful role in mixed-ability sibling play is often environmental: setting up the materials, removing hazards, and then stepping back to observe. Watch for the moment when both children are attending to the same object or action, even differently. That shared attention is the play zone. It needs space, not management.
Step in when one child is distressed, when the typically developing child has fully taken over and is no longer playing with their sibling but for them, or when the activity has run its natural course and a transition is needed. Between those moments, trust the children. The sibling relationship is, as Vygotsky might have noted, one of the richest natural scaffolding environments a child will ever inhabit.
Repetition and routine are not obstacles to play; for many children with SEND they are the conditions that make play possible at all. Rather than trying to vary the activity itself, try varying the role each child takes within it. If your child with SEND always wants to be the one who sets up the skittles, let their sibling focus on rolling, then counting, then recording a score in chalk. The core game stays the same; the experience of the typically developing sibling evolves naturally. Over time, the sibling often finds unexpected satisfaction in the ritual aspect of it too.
This is one of the most common dynamics in mixed-ability sibling play, and it is worth addressing gently, because the impulse behind it is kind. The problem is that doing everything for someone is not the same as playing with them, and children with SEND are often highly aware of the difference. Redirect by asking the typically developing sibling a question about their own experience: "What are you going to build?" rather than "Can you help your brother?" Giving each child a distinct, equivalent role, one sets up, one goes first, one calls out the colours, helps shift the dynamic from carer and cared-for back to co-players.
Yes, and Jaques London's range of traditional games offers several good starting points. Cooperative formats, where all players work toward a shared goal rather than competing against one another, remove the win-lose binary entirely. Skittles played as a collaborative challenge, where the aim is to knock down all the pins together in the fewest rolls, reframes the game completely. Puzzle play is inherently cooperative. Stacking games can be played as a shared height challenge rather than a competition. For families where distress around losing is significant, it is worth temporarily removing competitive framing altogether and reintroducing it gradually, in low-stakes moments, only when the child signals readiness.
The most reliable test is practical: try it. But there are useful questions to ask before you buy. Does the toy have a single correct way to be used, or multiple entry points? Can it be engaged with meaningfully without reading, without fine motor precision, without auditory processing, depending on which of these is relevant for your child? Is the sensory profile of the material predictable and non-threatening? Trawick-Smith's TIMPANI research offers a useful framework: the highest-quality play materials tend to be physically manipulable, open-ended, and free from a built-in narrative that excludes certain players. Wooden toys with simple mechanics, solid construction, and no electronic components generally meet these criteria. If you are uncertain, contact the retailer and ask specific questions about piece size, weight, and the range of ways the toy has been used by children with different needs.
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