🧠 AI Summary:

A game of pretend bowling might look like pure fun — but inside an ABA therapy center, it’s carefully designed skill-building in disguise. This blog breaks down why turn-taking and pretend play are foundational developmental goals for children with autism, what’s actually happening therapeutically during activities like bowling, and how On Target ABA weaves these powerful skills into everyday sessions. Because the best therapy doesn’t always look like therapy.

It Doesn’t Always Look Like Therapy — and That’s the Point

Picture this: a group of kids on their knees on a carpet, taking turns rolling a bright red ball toward a cluster of white bowling pins. There’s laughter. There’s cheering. Someone carefully sets the pins back up. Another child waits — a little impatiently, but waits — for their turn.

To a passerby, it looks like playtime.

To a trained behavior analyst, it’s a carefully structured session targeting some of the most important developmental skills a child with autism can build: turn-taking, cooperative play, frustration tolerance, joint attention, and social reciprocity.

At On Target ABA’s center, this is exactly what happened — and it’s a perfect window into the philosophy that drives everything we do. The best ABA therapy doesn’t always look like therapy. It looks like childhood.

Why Turn-Taking Is Such a Big Deal

Turn-taking sounds simple. For most neurotypical children, waiting for a turn develops naturally through everyday play experiences. But for many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), turn-taking is genuinely one of the most challenging social skills to master — and one of the most important.

BCBAs Here’s why it’s so critical:

• Turn-taking is the foundation of conversation. Every back-and-forth dialogue — every exchange between two people — is built on the same cognitive and behavioral architecture as taking turns in a game. Learning to wait, to attend to another person, to signal readiness, and to respond is the social scaffolding that underlies all communication.
• It requires reading social cues. To take a turn at the right moment, a child has to watch another person, track what they’re doing, and interpret when it’s time to act. These joint attention skills are areas where children with autism often need explicit support.
• It builds frustration tolerance. Waiting is hard. For children who struggle with impulse control or who experience heightened emotional responses, learning to pause and wait — even briefly — is a regulated, learnable skill that pays dividends across every area of daily life.
• It opens the door to friendship. Most peer play involves taking turns in some form. A child who can take turns in a structured game is building the same muscles they’ll use on a playground, in a classroom, and eventually in every relationship they form.

Turn-taking games are among the most essential activities for children learning how to express themselves and understand others — helping children grasp social cues and engage in meaningful interactions.

What Makes Pretend Play So Powerful for Kids with Autism

The bowling game our Columbus team used wasn’t just any activity — it was pretend play, and that distinction matters enormously.

Pretend play, also called symbolic or imaginative play, is when a child uses objects or actions to represent something else — a toy ball becomes a real bowling ball, a set of foam pins becomes a real lane. For neurotypical children, this kind of play emerges naturally around age two. For children with autism, however, pretend play can be particularly challenging due to difficulties with social communication and sensory processing differences — they may not understand the social cues involved, such as taking turns, sharing, and communicating with others.

This is precisely why building pretend play skills is such a meaningful therapeutic goal. When a child with autism engages in pretend play:

• They practice symbolic thinking — understanding that one thing can represent another, which is foundational to language and literacy.
• They develop narrative understanding — grasping that activities have a beginning, middle, and end, and that their actions affect the actions of others.
• They exercise social imagination — the ability to put themselves in a shared experience with another person and respond to that person’s role in the scenario.
• They build communication skills organically, in a natural context that feels motivating rather than clinical.

Engaging in imaginative scenarios helps children navigate social interactions, understand social norms, and express themselves better — and the enhancement of these skills through pretend play contributes to better long-term outcomes in social interactions.

What Was Really Happening During the Bowling Game

Let’s break down exactly what our Columbus clients were working on during their pretend bowling session — because there was a lot more going on than meets the eye.

Waiting for a Turn (Delay of Gratification)

Each child had to wait while another child rolled. This is a structured opportunity to practice tolerance of delay — a skill that’s systematically reinforced when the child successfully waits and then receives the natural reward of their own turn.

Attending to a Peer

While waiting, clients had to watch their peers — tracking the ball, watching the pins fall or stay standing, and registering the outcome. This builds joint attention and social observation skills that are foundational to peer interaction.

Cooperative Teamwork: Setting the Pins Back Up

This is one of the most beautifully intentional elements of this activity. After the pins fell, clients worked together to reset them. This required:

• Recognizing that the group needed something done
• Initiating or responding to a request for help
• Collaborating physically with a peer toward a shared goal
• Understanding cause and effect within a social context

That’s not just cute — that’s cooperative play at its most functional.

Celebrating Each Other

When a child knocked pins down, their peers had the opportunity to respond — with clapping, cheering, or simply acknowledging the moment. Structured play-based therapies, including ABA, help children learn to participate in group activities, develop language skills, and understand social cues — and every cheer or smile exchanged during a bowling game is exactly that kind of social language practice.

The ABA Framework Behind the Fun

None of this happens by accident. ABA therapists and BCBAs design activities like pretend bowling with clear clinical goals in mind. The play-based format is strategic, not incidental.

ABA therapists utilize child-led and spontaneous forms of play, like pretend play and cooperative games, to target specific developmental goals — an approach that not only makes therapy sessions more enjoyable but also reduces anxiety, helping children feel more in control.

Here’s how the ABA framework supports activities like bowling:

Positive Reinforcement — Every successful turn, every moment of waiting, every cooperative pin reset is an opportunity for reinforcement. When a child waits their turn and then rolls the ball, the natural consequence (the pins falling, the cheers of peers) acts as powerful intrinsic reinforcement — supplemented by verbal praise or other preferred rewards as needed.

Prompting and Fading — Early in the learning process, a therapist may use physical prompts (gentle guidance), gestural cues (pointing), or verbal prompts (“Now it’s your turn!”) to support the child. Over time, these prompts are systematically faded so the child initiates the behavior independently.

Data Collection — Even in the middle of a bowling game, your child’s RBT is observing and tracking: Did the child wait without prompting? Did they respond when their turn was cued? Did they initiate a cooperative behavior? This data informs how the program evolves.

Generalization — Skills practiced in a bowling game aren’t meant to stay on the carpet of the therapy center. The goal is for a child to take turns at a water fountain, in a classroom game, at a birthday party, and on a playground — because that’s where life happens.

Why Play-Based ABA Matters for Families

As a parent, it can sometimes feel jarring to drop your child off at ABA therapy and hear that they “played bowling today.” You might wonder: is this really enough? Is my child making progress?

The answer is a resounding yes — when the play is designed with intention.

Play plays a crucial role in boosting the success of ABA therapy for children with autism. When children participate in play-based activities, they are more likely to develop essential social, emotional, and cognitive skills — and these skills are often learned more quickly and effectively through play than through rigid drills, because play aligns with a child’s natural interests and tendencies.

Think of it this way: the goal of ABA therapy is not to teach a child to sit at a table and respond to flashcards. The goal is to help a child thrive — in their family, among their peers, in their community. Play is where children live. It’s where development happens naturally. And play-based ABA meets them exactly there.

How You Can Support Turn-Taking at Home

The skills your child builds in therapy are only as strong as the opportunities they have to practice them outside of sessions. Here are a few simple ways to reinforce turn-taking and cooperative play at home:

• Play simple board games together — Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, and similar games are built entirely on taking turns in a predictable, structured format.
• Use a visual turn-taking card — A simple card with two sides (“My turn” / “Your turn”) can make the abstract concept of waiting concrete and tangible.
• Narrate turn-taking when you see it — “Look — your sister waited for you! Now it’s her turn.” Drawing attention to turn-taking in everyday moments reinforces the concept.
• Praise the wait, not just the turn — When your child successfully waits, celebrate that. “I love how you waited so patiently!” reinforces the behavior you most want to strengthen.
• Try bowling at home — A foam bowling set from a toy store brings the exact activity home for more practice. The repetitive, predictable structure of the game makes it ideal for turn-taking practice.
  

The Bigger Picture: Therapy That Looks Like Childhood

At On Target ABA, we believe that the most effective therapy is also the most human. Children don’t learn their best when they’re anxious, bored, or disengaged. They learn when they’re having fun — when they’re invested in what’s happening, when the stakes feel real, and when success feels earned.

A pretend bowling game on a carpet in Columbus, Ohio checks every single one of those boxes. And every turn taken, every pin reset, every cheer shared between two kids who are learning to play together — that’s not just therapy. That’s growth. That’s connection. That’s a childhood being built, one roll at a time. 🎳

That level of attention is possible because we refuse to overload our clinical team. Your child’s care is worth that.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is pretend play a goal in ABA therapy?
Yes. Pretend play, also called symbolic play, is a formal developmental goal in many ABA programs for children with autism. It targets symbolic thinking, social interaction, language development, and cooperative skills.

Q: At what age should children with autism start working on turn-taking?
Turn-taking is typically introduced as an early social skill and can be targeted beginning in early intervention (ages 2–4). However, it remains a relevant goal across age groups depending on the child’s developmental level.

Q: How long does it take for a child with autism to learn turn-taking?
Every child is different. With consistent practice in therapy and at home, many children show meaningful progress within weeks to months. Your child’s BCBA will track data and adjust goals based on your child’s individual trajectory.

Q: How is ABA therapy different from just playing with a child?
In ABA therapy, play activities are deliberately designed to target specific, measurable skills. Therapists collect data, use prompting and reinforcement strategically, and systematically adjust programs based on your child’s progress — making it structured, evidence-based intervention even when it looks like play.

Ready to see what intentional, play-based ABA therapy looks like for your child? On Target ABA serves families across Ohio and Utah with center-based, home-based, and school-based services. Most families begin within weeks of contacting us.


→ Contact us to check availability in your area
→ Learn about our approach to ABA therapy
→ Read about what to expect in your child’s first ABA session