How parents can connect with their children through play

Sharing the game experience with their children is a privileged opportunity for parents to establish bridges and links with them. Therefore, they can and should play whenever they can with them! And not only at home, reserving a space and a time to share games and toys ... also on the way to school,

Sharing the game experience with their children is a privileged opportunity for parents to establish bridges and links with them. Therefore, they can and should play whenever they can with them! And not only at home, reserving a space and a time to share games and toys ... also on the way to school, playing counting cars of a certain color, or on the way to see grandma, while playing the riddles or the Veo I see inside the bus ...

Tips for playing with children

Parents can understand the game with their children as an experience, as an attitude, beyond the specific activities and games that we can propose to them. In this sense, parents can value the game and games of our children as healthy growth experiences, discarding the claim that the game is something nice but useless, a kind of infantile measles that fortunately passes as a child. Once this is done, the game, the main activity of our children, will become something shared and appreciated by the whole family, and the moment as an expected time. Children will learn to value, from a very young age, this time of day with their parents.

Through the game, can the child be educated? Is it convenient for parents to let them win? We should not let them win! Winning is not a gift: it must be achieved with effort and patience. When we play we learn such important things as being patient, overcoming frustration, taking on challenges, accepting rules, putting ourselves in the other's shoes, valuing our abilities and facing our limitations ... Assuming that game attitude, in which we all understand and agree on a certain dynamics favors all these and many more learnings that, if we interfere allowing ourselves to win, for example, possibly they will not occur.

Playing with children with a disability

Is playing the same with a child who has a disability or not? That is a question that many parents ask. The need to play exists exactly whether the child has a special need or not. The game represents in children with special needs an essential stimulus and a pleasant and very effective way to develop their potential.

What we must take into account is to choose and / or adapt the games or toys for your enjoyment. Many toy manufacturers market materials that can be used specifically by children with special needs.

Toys should not have sex

Is playing the same with a child as with a girl? Of course. Toys do not have sex. The ability to play is inherent to the human being, without distinction of any kind. Another thing is that, at certain ages, boys and girls show, in general, preferences for different types of games and toys: perhaps children prefer a game of action and movement, while girls can be inclined to games more social, where communication prevails.

But even in all cases it is not "must" be like this and much less we must discriminate against each other in any way, valuing, once again, their choices and preferences, whatever they may be.

Better, educational or didactic toy?

Our advice should be oriented more to variety, quantity, the way of asking and to values ​​such as thinking about others, sharing and being respectful rather than orienting them towards toys that we understand to be educational or didactic. All toys are educational, at the moment they help us grow and develop.

A bicycle, a doll, a ball, a construction or a board game, even if they do not teach us a content of the school curriculum (such as addition and subtraction), are undoubtedly highly educational.

Inma Marín
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Social educator and director of Marinva
-Co-author of 'The pleasure of Playing. Learn and have fun playing with your children '- Pedagogical Advisor of the Crecer Jugando Foundation - President of the International Association for the Right of children to play