What you need
- A light cotton dupatta, a thin towel or a soft handkerchief
- One favourite object — a steel katori, a rattle, a big soft toy
How to play
- 1
Hide your own face first
Hold the dupatta over your face and say 'kahan gaye?' Wait two seconds. Pull it down and say 'peek-a-boo'. Their surprise is the whole game.
- 2
Wait longer each time
Stay hidden for one second, then two, then three. The waiting is the hard part for a baby, and it is where the learning is.
- 3
Let them pull the cloth
Once they can grab, hold the dupatta loosely so they can yank it off your face themselves. Now they control the game, not you.
- 4
Hide the katori
Around eight months, put a katori on the floor and cover half of it with the cloth. Most babies will reach for the visible part and uncover it.
- 5
Hide it completely
Now cover the katori fully. A younger baby loses interest — for them it is gone. Somewhere near nine or ten months, they will lift the cloth. That day is a real milestone.
What your child is learning
Honestly stated — this is what the activity actually builds, not a list of everything it might touch.
- Object permanence — things still exist when they are out of sight
- Anticipation and waiting for a few seconds
- Taking turns in a shared game
- Reaching and pulling with control
Peek-a-boo looks like nothing. It is actually the first experiment your baby ever runs, repeated a hundred times until the result is certain: things that disappear can come back.
That single idea is what makes it possible for you to leave the room later without the world ending. Babies who have practised hiding and finding cope better with a parent stepping out, because they have evidence that people return.
Keep it safe
- Use a light, breathable cotton cloth. No plastic, no thick blanket, no anything that traps air.
- Never cover your baby’s face — cover yours, or cover an object. If your baby pulls the cloth onto their own head, lift it off straight away.
- Keep the cloth small and folded. Long trailing ends are a wrapping risk.
- Stay within arm’s reach the whole time, and put the cloth away when you stop playing.
When they get bored of it
Change where you hide. Duck behind the door and pop back out. Hide behind the sofa and call their name so they turn towards your voice — now they are using sound to locate you, which is a step harder than using their eyes.
At around a year, hide the katori under one of two upturned bowls and let them choose. Get it wrong sometimes yourself. Being right when you were wrong is enormously satisfying at that age.
If your baby is not yet lifting a fully hidden object, they are not behind. Go back to half-covering it for a few weeks. This one arrives on its own schedule.