All kids need play time. In fact, playing can be vital to a child’s development – teaching them many life skills that can help them grow to become a healthy adult.
Of course, not all forms of play are wholly good for your child. Kids can pick up bad behaviors if you don’t set boundaries or monitor your kids. This is why it’s important to encourage the right types of play.
Playing with your kids is one way to do this – you can incorporate life lessons into games. Alternatively, you can teach kids life skills simply by buying them the right toys or teaching them certain games. Below are just a few examples of how you can use play time to teach your kids life lessons.
Empathy
Being able to put oneself in another person’s shoes is a vital life skill. It can help us to be more considerate of others, to please others, to encourage respect and ultimately to build/maintain friendships.
Empathy is a skill that is great to teach through role-playing games. Using toys or by acting out roles in person, you can teach kids how to identify when people are unhappy or when things aren’t fair. You can then teach them how to react in these situations (such as pretending one of the toys is sick and encouraging your kid to take certain steps to care for them).
Problem Solving
Your kids will encounter problems in life. By teaching them problem-solving skills, you can teach them to not complain about problems or run away from them – instead giving them the skills to tackle such problems.
Many video games and puzzles teach problem solving skills in a fun way. If kids get frustrated with certain games, use this as an opportunity to teach them how to manage this frustration. Help them to stay calm and ask questions like ‘have you tried doing this?’ without showing them how to do it. This can teach them to think out of the box and keep looking for different solutions.
Forward Planning
Success in life is often down to good forward planning. This includes considering various different eventualities and preparing for as many of them as you can.
Certain games can teach forward planning. A classic example is chess – which requires players to think several moves ahead and plan out various different plays. You can play chess with your child or look into chess games online, allowing them to play against a computer or other players. Several card games and video games can also teach forward planning.
Patience
Patience is something that many kids struggle with, but it becomes more vital as we get older. While sometimes it is beneficial to strike the iron while it’s hot, there are other times when it’s better to take one’s time such as saving up money for things or learning a new skill (such as learning a foreign language or a musical instrument).
You can teach patience through games that require building things. This could include assembling jigsaw puzzles or building Lego creations. Certain board games and card games can also help to teach patience.
Money management
We all have to learn to be good with money as we get older. This includes learning to budget and having the discipline to not spend money that we don’t have.
Some kids don’t learn how to manage money until they start receiving pocket money. But it may be possible to teach kids how to manage money before this. Games like Monopoly are all about money management and can be a great start. There are also video games that teach kids how to use money. You can also play shop role-playing games using pennies and teach kids how to count money.
Timekeeping
Being able to manage our time is as important a skill as being able to manage our money. It’s important to be punctual and to be able to get things done by deadlines. Being able to juggle multiple tasks and multiple timing can be a particularly useful skill that can help with everything from preparing meals to managing multiple clients.
A lot of kids don’t have much concept of time. It’s worth starting by teaching kids how to tell the time – there are a few clock games that you can use to do this. Meanwhile, playing games with timers can help kids to learn how to complete tasks within deadlines. In fact, adding a timer to many mundane tasks can be a great way to turn them into games (such as tidying a room).
Failure management
Nobody likes a sore loser. A lot of young kids don’t take failure very well. However, failure is a part of life. While persistence can eventually help us to succeed at many tasks, it’s also important to know when to accept defeat graciously and move on.
How can you teach kids to manage failure? By playing games, and by not always letting kids win. Sometimes it’s healthy to try to win games against your kids to teach them that losing can be a part of life. How you accept failure can also impact how they react – make sure you’re not getting angry when you lose or rage quitting video games.
Leadership
Being able to rise up and be a good leader is probably one of the most prized skills that someone can have. Many of us are not good leaders, but we can all become good leaders. Learning leadership skills early can be particularly beneficial.
Clear communication, teamwork and decision-making are all skills required to be a good leader. Teaching things to your child is a great way to model leadership. However, to get them to act like leaders, you need to encourage them to teach you. One way to do this could be to ask your child to teach you how to play a game. You can also try role-playing games where they are the leader and they have to make decisions. This helps kids to become more comfortable being a leader.
Negotiation
Negotiation skills are important in many areas of life for making sure things work out fairly for you and others. They are important when resolving conflicts, building relationships, advancing one’s career and not getting taken advantage of by others.
Parents are sometimes afraid to teach kids negotiation skills, because they feel it will make them more likely to argue back. But compromising is also an important negotiation skill, and teaching kids this early can actually teach kids to be less demanding. Some board games and card games can require negotiation tactics. You can also teach kids negotiation skills through role-playing.
Confidence
Finally, it’s important to teach kids confidence. Growing up confident will teach kids to take healthy risks, to chase goals, to believe in one’s own abilities and to take criticism well.
You can teach confidence through regular praise of achievements. There are many forms of play that involve achieving things such as drawing pictures and building Lego structures and winning board games. Praise kids for their achievements in these activities (a few of these inspiring phrases could be worth trying). However, don’t be afraid to also provide constructive criticism so that your kids don’t get overconfident.
Conclusion
There are clearly many life skills that can be taught through play time. By guiding your kids to the right games and activities, you can help kids develop these skills. Of course, games are not the only way to teach kids life lessons. However, they can be one of the most fun ways to do it.