It's Not Just Fun and Games

When you play games with your children, you model behavior that they will absorb like a sponge. Playing games with your children can reinforce taking turns, manners, and good sportsmanship, and can have profound effect on the development of their social and emotional skills. 

Benefits of playing games with children include:

• Emotional Development:  Turn-taking, winning & losing gracefully

• Critical thinking: understanding and developing strategies to compete

• Academic skills: games can be used to test fact retention, demonstrate concepts or apply knowledge in a fun and engaging way

• Personal relationships: laughing and enjoying time together

Simple turn-taking games can begin during the preschool years even before children are able to read or follow gameplay directions. Cards with simple pictures that suggest an action (jump, touch your toes, give mommy a hug) can be performed in an alternating fashion (first you, then me, then you) with two people.  Animal charades, words that start with the letter “B”, etc can all be played by pre-readers (and the two of you can make the rules as complex as they want them to be!). It is a wonderful way to spend time with your children that paves the way for “family game night” later.

As children get older, playing board games is a way to instill values. When do you play by the rules? When is it ok to adapt the rules to accommodate skill levels (a handicap)? What is fair, and is the benefit of playing games the opportunity to win or is it the journey that counts? Game time is sometimes the best way to engage kids in conversation and develop social skills. Plus, when families laugh and play together, they form a deeper relationship, and nurture feelings of trust and belonging. Playing games as a family builds emotional bonds that last a lifetime. They say that families that play together stay together. It is the laughter and the empowerment that children feel when they can participate in an activity with adults that makes game time special.

Playing a game also encourages conversation. During the wait time between turns, little random thoughts -- about friends, their day at school or how they feel might pop into game-time conversation -- topics that might never have come up during the hectic rush of daily life. Or perhaps the opportunity to sit and reflect as they wait for their turn causes them to remember something they wanted to share. Each thought is a golden moment that provides a little glimpse into their lives, creating openings for parents to ask and build on the thought or perhaps make a mental note to bring the subject up at a later time. Either way, playing games encourages conversations that might not have happened otherwise. 

Classic games (such as Monopoly, Scrabble, Blokus, Apples to Apples, Imaginiff) that can engage family members of all ages are a prized commodity and not always easy to find. Games played by children of multiple ages enhance family relationships and shape family dynamics. Giving siblings the opportunity to enjoy camaraderie and competition while in a situation where they have to get along despite the outcome helps develop coping skills that translate to the real world.

Favorite card games for our family (for entertaining while in waiting rooms or standing in line at theme parks) included SET (an attribute visualization game) and Wiz Kid (a fast-paced category word game) because they were as fun and exciting for adults as well as kids. For our family, games were also a great way to practice math skills without being too computational (reinforcing math facts, time-telling, measurement, logical thinking, and problem-solving).