Parallel play is a form of non-verbal communication. It consists of two (or more) people doing separate things together. There’s no pressure to interact as you get in most communication.
It’s particularly common among small children; each child is engaged in their own play activity. They’re comfortable in each other’s space, unthreatened and feel safe to do exactly what they feel like doing at that moment.
Parallel play is also surprisingly regulating for neurodivergent minds. Long before I knew of a name for it (Parallel play), I used to wish I had a friend who could sit back-to-back with me in a room while we did our own things. I didn’t want eye contact or have to worry about interpreting facial cues or verbal cues. I didn’t want to think about body language. All of these things can be very stressful. Finding out about parallel play and that it is surprisingly common for people with ADHD (in my case, ADHD-I) to prefer this kind of social interaction was quite validating.
There is a purposeful form of it common these days they call “Body doubling”, which I’m not entirely familiar with. But apparently it involves someone simply “being there”, nearby, while you’re working on tasks that are difficult or frustrating to accomplish. It sounds nearly identical to parallel play to me and I can see why it’s a highly recommended “task management” strategy for adult-ADHD and for people with other neurodivergent situations.
In order to illustrate parallel play, I made a video of me engaging in parallel play with you.
Normal body language interpret will not work here. A neurotypical interpretation will likely be entirely different. “Are you mad at me?” “is everything ok?” “are you sad?”. Notice if you have any intrepretation of body language as you watch this. You can use them in your replies. I’d really love to know.