Children pretend playing

Bright Horizons | The Importance of Pretend Play in Child Development

Where can you find police officers, veterinarians, office workers, princesses, karate instructors, and chefs all happily working side-by-side? In the dramatic play area of a child’s classroom, of course.

Many assume that fun and imaginative pretend play — in classrooms or at home — has limited educational value. But that’s hardly the case! The truth is, in the midst of creating a restaurant together, clomping around in grown-up shoes, or twirling around with friends in a fairytale land, children are learning to solve problems, coordinate, cooperate, and think flexibly. Imagine the skills required to turn the sandbox into a dinosaur bone excavation site!

Dr. Scott Kaufman emphasizes the value of pretend play in his 2012 Psychology Today article stating that, “Systematic research has increasingly demonstrated a series of clear benefits of children’s engagement in pretend games from the ages of about two and one half through ages six or seven. ”

WHAT IS PRETEND PLAY AND HOW DOES IT HELP CHILDREN LEARN?

Pretending is important in child development. Through pretend play, children:

Learn about themselves and the world. Dramatic play experiences are some of the first ways children learn about their likes and dislikes, their interests, and their abilities. They experiment with role playing and work to make sense out of what they’ve observed. Just watch children playing with dolls to see examples of this. Dolls often become versions of the child himself and are a safe way for children to express new ideas and feelings.
Work out confusing, scary, or new life issues. Have you ever witnessed children pretending to visit the doctor? One child dutifully holds the mock stethoscope as the others line up for a check-up. More often than not someone gets ‘shots’. This is a child’s way of exploring an experience that is common and sometimes confusing or scary. Through these role plays, children become more comfortable and prepared for life events in a safe way. Children often use pretend play to work out more personal challenging life events too, whether it is coping with an illness in the family, the absence of a parent or divorce, or a house fire.

Develop important complex social and higher order thinking skills. Pretend play is much more than simple play activities; it requires advanced thinking strategies, communication, and social skills. Through pretend play, children learn to do things like negotiate, consider others’ perspectives, transfer knowledge from one situation to another, delay gratification, balance their own ideas with others, develop a plan and act on it, explore symbolism, express and listen to thoughts and ideas, assign tasks and roles, and synthesize different information and ideas. In this creative play description, we could just as easily be describing the skills needed to successfully manage a work project for an adult as describing children’s pretend play.
Cultivate social and emotional intelligence. How we interact with others is key to our lifelong success and happiness. Knowing how to read social cues, recognize and regulate emotions, negotiate and take turns, and engage in a long-term activity that is mutually beneficial are no easy tasks. There is no substitute for creative and imaginative play when it comes to teaching and enhancing these abilities in children.
Synthesize knowledge and skills. Because learning and child development doesn’t happen in discrete pockets of time or during isolated activities, children need opportunities to blend their skills and knowledge together. Pretend play is an ideal way to do this. Think of children playing ‘grocery’ store. They sort by attributes as they group similar foods in sections of the store, use math concepts to tabulate amounts as they determine prices and calculate grocery bills, use writing to communicate by making signs, experiment with shapes and weights as they organize the store, work collaboratively as they assign roles and play together, and much more.

DRAMATIC PLAY IDEAS & ACTIVITIES FOR CHILDREN

As a parent or caregiver, you further encourage learning skills and child development as kids engage in pretending. Here are a few children’s activities and tips for pretend play.

Use stories: Invite your children to recreate a favorite story or take it further and add their own twist. During your pretending game, prompt their ideas by asking questions like: “What do you think happened next?” and “What if the dog didn’t find his bone?”
Provide dolls and puppets: Make sure your child has ample and regular access to things like dolls, stuffed animals, or puppets. These don’t have to be store-bought; they can be cut out of paper or made from socks. Through imaginative play, children easily ascribe feelings and ideas to these ‘people’ and ‘animals’ and often use them to express, explore and work out their own ideas, thoughts, and feelings.
Create “prop boxes”: Prop boxes are something most high-quality early childhood programs have plenty of. They are boxes (or bins, crates, or bags) with themed dramatic play materials in them. It’s like having a creative experience in a box. Examples of popular prop boxes are a flower shop, office, restaurant, post office, and shoe store. Have a few materials in prop boxes and let your children’s creativity take it from there.

Make time: No material, environment, or story can take the place of uninterrupted time to play and explore ideas. Pretend play doesn’t fit nicely into twenty minute segments. Be ok with leaving a post office in the living room for a few days to allow your children to fully explore and enhance their creative explorations.

As children’s time is taken up more and more with scheduled activities, it is important to consider what they are losing when they miss out on pretend play. In many ways, a few hours creating pretend ponies and galloping around the yard with fellow cowboys and cowgirls is as developmentally essential as any other pursuit. So next time you see your children engaged in pretend play, don’t rush them to homework, cleaning their room, or piano practice. Allow time for them to build a rocket ship from chairs and blankets and pretend they’re astronauts; it’s time well spent. You might consider crafting a space helmet from foil and a bowl and joining in!

The Importance of Pretend Play

Young children learn by imagining and doing. Have you ever watched your child pick up a stone and pretend it is a zooming car, or hop a Lego across the table as if it were a person or a bunny? Your child is using an object to represent something else while giving it action and motion. But this pretend play is not as simple as it may seem. The process of pretending builds skills in many essential developmental areas.

Language Skills
Have you ever listened in as your child engages in imaginary play with his toys or friends? You will probably hear some words and phrases you never thought he knew! In fact, we often hear our own words reflected in the play of children. Kids can do a perfect imitation of mom, dad, and the teacher! Pretend play helps your child understand the power of language. In addition, by pretend playing with others, he learns that words give him the means to reenact a story or organize play. This process helps your child to make the connection between spoken and written language — a skill that will later help him learn to read.

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Social and Emotional Skills
When your child engages in pretend (or dramatic) play, he is actively experimenting with the social and emotional roles of life. Through cooperative play, he learns how to take turns, share responsibility, and creatively problem-solve. When your child pretends to be different characters, he has the experience of "walking in someone else's shoes," which helps teach the important moral development skill of empathy. It is normal for young children to see the world from their own egocentric point of view, but through maturation and cooperative play, your child will begin to understand the feelings of others. He also builds self-esteem when he discovers he can be anything just by pretending!

Thinking Skills
Pretend play provides your child with a variety of problems to solve. Whether it's two children wanting to play the same role or searching for the just right material to make a roof for the playhouse, your child calls upon important cognitive thinking skills that he will use in every aspect of his life, now and forever.

Does your child enjoy a bit of roughhousing? Great! Some researchers in early brain development believe that this sort of play helps develop the part of the brain (the frontal lobe) that regulates behavior. So instead of worrying that this type of activity will encourage him to act out or become too aggressive, be assured that within a monitored situation, roughhouse play can actually help your child learn the self-regulation skills needed to know how and when this type of play is appropriate.

Nurturing the Imagination
Not enough pretend play at your house? Consider creating a prop box or corner filled with objects to spark your preschooler's fantasy world. You might include:

Large plastic crates, cardboard blocks, or a large, empty box for creating a "home"
Old clothes, shoes, backpacks, hats
Old telephones, phone books, magazines
Cooking utensils, dishes, plastic food containers, table napkins, silk flowers
Stuffed animals and dolls of all sizes
Fabric pieces, blankets, or old sheets for making costumes or a fort
Theme-appropriate materials such as postcards, used plane tickets, foreign coins, and photos for a pretend vacation trip
Writing materials for taking phone messages, leaving notes, and making shopping lists

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“Play is a space in which a child feels free”

Galiya, now, unlike, for example, the Soviet period, preschool children play quite a bit at home and in the yard, because the emphasis in their upbringing is on the development of the intellect. Parents take their children to early development centers, they start teaching them reading and counting, and a foreign language quite early. Is it correct? How important is play in child development?

It seems to me that the main reasons for the oblivion of the game do not lie in the plane of the historical era or the fashion for the early development of the intellect. I think that the main reason was the impossibility of transferring the play culture within the children's environment, since natural, spontaneous children's communities of different ages ceased to exist. We used to see them in the yard of the house, in the yard of the school, the children had the time, space and community in order to perceive the living children's culture.

After all, many games have very deep, very old roots. From generation to generation, older children begin to play some kind of games - tag, catch-up, dodgeball, younger children are drawn in, and thus the game culture is transmitted further. Now this structure does not exist. Adults, of course, are the bearers of this play culture, but when the play comes from an adult, it is not so attractive to the child, it is something else. And now parents do not let their children into the yard for completely natural reasons: cities are growing, people know each other less and it is simply becoming unsafe.

Parents' websites and forums constantly discuss the development of the child's intellectual potential, and in these conversations an element of competition often slips through: “My child began to read at the age of three!”, “And mine at four!”. Why is this happening? And why did early development methods, which, in fact, replace the game, become so popular?

It seems to me that the point is the spread of a comparative approach in the parenting environment: it has become extremely important how competent I am as a parent, whether I am doing well in my function of fatherhood or motherhood. Parents began to give their children more time and energy, and perhaps this is partly why they ask themselves the question: what can be developed in a child? And this is not necessarily intellectual development, but also artistic, musical. Parents with the best intentions can take their child to leisure family programs, to museums, to master classes in applied art.

What is the significance of play from the point of view of a child's social development, his assimilation of the norms and rules of the world around him?

The game is a very good modeling situation in which social roles and social relations that exist in society today are reproduced. A growing child, who cannot yet be really included in these social relations, but is very eager for this, can learn many things through this simulated situation, acquire many competencies of social interaction. Namely: the ability to negotiate, refuse, insist, bring your own initiative, prove its attractiveness. Play is extremely important during a very long period, in fact, the period when the child cannot be fully included in the context of social relations. All this he really needs.

I wonder how the game generates initiative?

The initiative is formed starting from the moment of entering the game situation. Do you know how difficult it is for many preschoolers to just say, "I'll play with you!" !"

Are they unwilling or shy?

They are shy, not confident in their abilities. The other playing side is also children, who are absolutely immature creatures in terms of social communications. They may not hear at first. And let's say this child is used to being heard the first time, to take a step towards him, to respond to his desire immediately, for example, if he grows up in a very adult environment.

In play, a child faces many complex tasks and questions: “What should I do if I don’t want to play a certain role?”, “How should I react if I don’t like this turn of the play plot?”, “If I I have my own idea, how to convey it to my peers?”, “How to deal with the feelings that came over me when I was kicked out by the ball and I have to leave the game?”, “How to deal with the fact that I wanted to be chosen in playing a bunny or a bully cockerel, but they didn’t choose me? And the second, third round of the game is already underway, and it's not me . .. ”There are really a lot of topics that are not easy for a child.

The game is also an opportunity to survive failure, to feel like a hero, to try on the role of mom or dad, to lose a situation that scares me a little. For example, I don't like having my hair cut - and I can be a hairdresser. I don't like doctors - I can be a doctor.

The game has many different functions. This is a space where a child feels free, because play is a type of human activity that fundamentally does not and cannot have any result. This is a process activity, where pleasure comes not from what result I have achieved and how this result is socially evaluated, but from the process itself, from interaction, from communication, from living some imaginary situation.

Play is a unique activity. Therefore, now adults are increasingly resorting to games, games libraries are opening in libraries, people go there specifically to play. This is an extraordinary space of great inner freedom, which you can experience in a very cultivated way. This is not a situation where I drank a lot of alcohol and began to dance freely, no. This is a highly cultural form of activity developed by civilization over many years, in which at the same time I can be absolutely free. And this activity is simultaneously metaphorical, relaxing, communicative.

Reminiscent of drawing or, for example, dancing…

In dancing, the ability to improvise and subdue this situation is achieved through preliminary training. To dance, I first have to control my body, feel the rhythm, I need some conditions.
And the game is a unique way of activity precisely because I don't know anything, I went and I play.

Which games are more beneficial for the child - individual or group?

It depends a lot on age. Young children are practically unable to play with each other. They can play side by side, but not together, and such a game - outwardly joint, but divided in content - is also useful, since children, for example, adding blocks, can unwittingly copy the actions of another child and thereby enrich their play repertoire. But only when speech develops more or less, when a clear “I am not you” appears in the speech, then the children can somehow agree on a joint game: “Come on, you will cook porridge!”, “And I will feed!” , "And I'm laying out the plates!"

The game develops speech, because it is an unusually attractive activity, I dare say, not only for children, but for a person in principle, and for children it is also attractive because it is very accessible. The game is very motivating for many things: communication, interaction, imitation, development of the imagination, it makes it possible to internally identify yourself with some character and be this character in an imaginary situation.

In my practice, there was a very vivid example when we invited children to act out the fairy tale "Three Little Pigs". None of the children wanted to be a pig, because, as the children believed, pigs are stupid, in a simple way, losers. Everyone wanted to be wolves. What is the role of the wolf? He came, scared, the pigs got scared, the wolf blew - the house fell apart. Apparently, today's five-year-old boys lack the role in which they can thus prove themselves. Well, well, why can't we, in a game situation, let them all be wolves?

How should parents react if a child enthusiastically plays some destructive games, for example, pretends to be a drunkard or a terrorist?

Children can only reflect in the game what somehow emotionally affected them in their childhood. Whether the situation with the drinking dad, whether the news programs that they constantly hear. What is often happening in the family now? Parents came home, turned on the TV - for them it is a background, but for a child it is a real life that is happening somewhere and which he cannot fully comprehend. He must play it many times in the game in order to still understand what it is - terrorism, wars, everything that he sees.

On the one hand, this is a signal for us about the environment in which the child lives, but, on the other hand, each child is unique, and different children react differently to the same event. For example, we read the same fairy tale to them, and for one, the fate of the child who was taken to the forest and left by the tree will be important, and for the other, the opportunity to experience interesting adventures. We need to have great confidence in what children play, because for us it is a picture of their inner life. We can thus see what affects them and do something about it. The worst way is to forbid the child, to say: “What nonsense are you playing!” The content of the game is always some food for thought.

And one more important thing: do not abruptly interrupt the child when he is playing something with enthusiasm, because it's time to finish. It makes sense to approach him, ask what he plays, how and when his gaming story can end. Of course, this takes some patience.

Is it true that the simpler the toy, the more it stimulates the development of the child's imagination and fantasy? What kind of toys would you recommend buying for children from 3 to 7 years old - ready-made or material toys?

It also depends on age. Still, in a small child, a spoon, a cup, a doll, similar to real ones, will rather cause a desire to play with them. The fact is that a child's imagination reaches its peak between the ages of four and five. This is the golden age of imagination, and at this age a child can already make a boat, a car, and something else out of simple material, such as plasticine. But until now, most likely not. Therefore, up to four years it is better to offer the child the world of real game items.

And for older children, you can buy toys-materials. But you see, sometimes children are so eager to live the life of some hero that for them any cloth cannot be a veil for Cinderella, who marries a prince, and any piece of wood cannot become a real skewer or sword. Still, it's good to have some kind of set of objects that allows children to identify with the characters.

But what is really absolutely useless for children is clockwork, fully programmed toys. Toys that reproduce some kind of sounds are very bad: this is something that very rudely and obtrusively invades the world of the child, into the area of \u200b\u200bhis imagination.

What do you think about vampire toys that are in fashion today?

They usually serve only to show off this toy to their comrades. I haven't seen many examples to the contrary. You know, these are such “objects of status” among children. Let's say a girl comes to the garden and unloads all the fashionable pony horses from her backpack: the first, the second, and the fifth. It is very unlikely that she will start a game with these horses. No, she will play ordinary games: mom and dad, doctor - and horses - this is to show off in front of other children.

Should parents respond to this somehow?

Generally speaking, there are "status" things in the world of adults: people demonstrate glasses, watches, purses, which reflect their social success. And this is not a question of forbidding or not forbidding children to do the same - instead of prohibitions, you need to show the child how to deal with all this further.

Let me tell you a case from my practice. A girl brings a dozen pony horses to class, and I turn to her with a request: “Come on, today you will leave me the horse that you are in the most sympathetic mood now.”

And for me, this is a reason to continue talking with this girl about her mood, and not about the horse at all. But as soon as I start to say: “Oh, how great, how many horses you have!” - the girl replies sadly: “You know, I still don’t have enough of this, the other, the fifth, I saw them in the store, my parents promised me to buy them.” Or begins to envy another girl who may have five horses, but exactly those that are missing in her collection. This is actually a conversation about nothing.

But it's pointless to forbid it, we can just give children patterns of behavior, what can be done with it next.

Are there any peculiarities of games for boys and girls?

Girls are very receptive to the themes of fairy tales, they play with them with pleasure. Especially from the age of five, when the time comes for the first childhood love, girls can easily lose all their experiences in the game. Girls are very fond of being fairies - this is how they lose the theme of magic, because they have some distrust of how it is possible in life.

Boys play the themes of courage, heroism, omnipotence. Previously, they did this with the help of war games, but now, mainly, these are games based on Western comics and cartoons (Batmen, Spidermen, etc.). This stage is very important in the process of formation of gender identity.

Many parents today do not send their children to kindergartens. How justified is this?

I think that those parents who are seriously focused on the early intellectual development of the child can just do this at home, in the family, individually. But a child receives a unique opportunity to be in a children's community in a kindergarten. He cannot get this in the family due to its small number of children and the lack of close friendly relations with neighbors. He cannot get this in the sandbox, where each child is under the personal supervision of his mother or nanny.

Kindergarten is indeed a unique place for children to interact in play. I would draw the attention of parents to this, before asking teachers how much the child will advance in English. We are well aware that teaching English in a group format on the principle of “twice a week for twenty minutes” (and the child can’t stand it longer) does not provide language advancement. Those parents who want the child to speak English must either speak English at home part of the time, or invite a governess for the child.

The same thing happens when children in the garden arrange Zaitsev's blocks. This is completely useless, because each child will still come to understand these blocks at some personal, individual pace. And playing time will be missed, the child will not play well, and already at school age will not be fully developed in social and communicative terms.

Will be shy, will be too touchy, will not be able to withstand losses, will not be able to act constructively. And what is very important - will not be able to constructively obey the rules.

Constructive cooperation means that sometimes I do not like this or that person, but I interact with him, because I understand that our business, our team will benefit from this. In constructive cooperation, in fact, there are not many personal likes and dislikes. That is, this is precisely cooperation, joint work, contracts, adherence to rules. And this is a very important skill that is achieved precisely in games. I'm not talking about the fact that games lay an important foundation for masculinity, femininity, gender roles. Children play the roles of their gender, and sometimes they take on the roles of the opposite sex, because they are curious, they are trying to understand what it is like to be in a different field.

It's not for nothing that adults are so eager for a game situation, for dressing up, for dressing up, for the opportunity to be in some other role. Even if adults get a lot for themselves in this, then children can only get something for themselves in such a situation. Therefore, do not underestimate the role of the game and forget about it.

Sometimes the only thing that can tear a child away from modern gadgets is a game. Children who "stick" to electronic games are always ready to pull away from them to play together with other children. And you won't lure them into anything else. So instilling a gaming culture, experiencing the pleasure of the game is, in a sense, also the prevention of computer addiction.

Are all children's games equally useful

Play is the leading activity of preschool children. It is in the game that the child develops the basic mental functions (imagination, thinking, memory, attention, speech). Therefore, training sessions with preschoolers are best done in a playful way.

What are the signs of "real play" that will be useful for the development of the child?

Domestic psychologist LSVygotsky said that the basis of the game is an imaginary situation.

What is it?

According to LS Vygotsky, an imaginary situation takes place where there is a discrepancy between the visual field and the semantic field. It is characteristic of the game that everything can be everything.

Remember the “magic” words of childhood - “pretend”, “as if”: when “I pretend to be a car, my mother’s lipstick is a pretend whistle, and my father’s belt is a pretend snake (or train)”, then there is a game. Pay attention to an interesting detail: toys do not appear in all the examples given. There are no toys, but there is a game. Here there is a "divergence of the semantic and visible fields." You see one thing and imagine another.

What makes this possible? Thanks to the imagination, which allows you to transfer the functions of one object to another. Therefore, an imaginary situation can rightfully be called also an imaginary situation.

So, the criterion of the game is the presence of an imaginary or imaginary situation.

The creation of an imaginary situation is possible due to the development of the main neoplasm in preschool children, namely, imagination. In turn, the development of imagination is closely connected with children's play. On the one hand, it is a necessary condition for the emergence of the game, on the other hand, it develops in the game.

In the process of developing the game, the child moves from simple, elementary, ready-made plots to complex, independently invented ones, covering almost all spheres of reality. He learns to play not next to other children, but together with them, to do without numerous game attributes, masters the rules of the game and begins to follow them, no matter how difficult and inconvenient for the baby they may be.

Such games are typical for children of senior preschool age, and they are called role-playing games. The development of this type of game is preceded by two other necessary types of children's games: director's and figurative-role-playing. In order to play role-playing games, a child needs certain skills, which are formed due to the two previous stages in the development of a child's game. The plot-role form of the game, in turn, turns into a game with rules.

At 2-3 years old, children play director. The child in this game begins to transfer functions from one object to another (for example, a cube can be a typewriter or a cup). In such games, children play short stories taken from life. At the same time, they do without partners in the game. If at this age children play in a group, then the game takes place not together, but side by side.

The child director acquires the necessary quality for the further development of the game - he learns to "see the whole before the parts."

A kid who knows director's play will be able to play along with a real partner in a role-playing game without any problems.

The ability to see the whole before the parts is the basis of play and imagination, without which a child can never become a magician.

The second component of the role-playing game (besides the plot) is the role, the ability to hold the role position. This line of development is revealed at the very beginning of the fourth year of a child's life: a new type of play arises - figurative-role play. Children begin to portray certain fairy-tale characters, animals, people. They copy their habits, manners, language. This property of children - the ability to reincarnate - may in some cases have the value of psychological rehabilitation. For example, a child who is bullied by peers in kindergarten may transform into a lion and thus feel more confident.

When a child has learned to invent a plot on his own (i.e., in other words, mastered the director's game) and gained experience in role-playing behavior (played a figurative role-playing game, tried to reincarnate), then there is a basis for the development of a role-playing game.

What does the baby get in this game? First of all, as D.B. Elkonin, the child in this game reflects the relations specific to the society in which he lives. In the role-playing game, the main attention of the child is directed to the social relations of people. If earlier children did not need special work to familiarize them with the environment, now circumstances have changed and additional efforts are required from adults.

For this it is very important to talk to children about the events that have happened. For example, a child with his mother were in a hairdresser. Or a teacher with a group of children went to the hairdresser for an excursion. This visit is a must-have. But, "composing" a story, it is necessary to fulfill important conditions.

First, you need to include information that the child can then use in the game. It is important to show those people who operate in a particular field of activity, and, most importantly, those relationships between them that exist in life. For example, in a story about a hairdressing salon, male and female masters, a manicurist, a cashier, clients who come to get a haircut, style or dye their hair, shave, do manicure, etc. must necessarily appear.

The second rule implies a very strong emotional coloring of what is happening. This elevates the ordinary to the rank of an event. Children are better at remembering things that are emotionally meaningful to them. The easiest way to achieve the desired effect is if the heroes of your story do not succeed, if some ridiculous thing happens.

Well, for example, let's go back to the hairdresser's: the hairdresser's scissors suddenly disappeared somewhere, someone was dyed blue instead of the usual paint, someone was going to get a haircut, but ended up with a doctor. Please note that all nonsense should be very closely related to the information that the child will then use in the game, but now he will “discover” it for himself. It turns out that hairdressers put on bathrobes, the master needs scissors to cut, and in the hairdresser's they paint with completely different colors than the kid is used to painting, and the chair must be raised and lowered with the help of a pedal. In addition, all the absurdities were spoken out, played by the participants in the events.

In this way, the child gets the opportunity and the ability to then incorporate the experience gained into his play.

The role-playing game, developing, brings to the fore the game rule, which begins to play a leading role, and a new type of game appears on the stage - a game with rules.

This game gives the child two necessary abilities.

Firstly, the implementation of the rules in the game is always associated with their comprehension and reproduction of an imaginary situation. If you remember, then imagination is also connected with meaning and, moreover, for its development it involves special tasks for comprehension.

Second, playing with rules teaches you how to communicate. After all, most games with rules are collective games.

Often parents want their child to have such games that will occupy him completely, and he will not interfere with adults. But the game as a process of learning life skills involves the discussion and evaluation of the information received, its kind of "sorting" by the child himself (at first, mostly with the help of adults). If adults cannot or do not want to do this - alas, then it turns out that it is generally harmful for a child to play. Because there will be no benefit from such a game, and the child will not receive either intellectual development or adequate life skills. (In the same way as if a child were allowed to study in a classroom without a teacher: not all adults are capable of self-education, and even children are even more so).

Dear parents and teachers: the game is a collective process, as a rule!

It is very rare for a child to play toys with himself (although everyone needs to be alone sometimes, and a child is no exception). But for the most part, as a rule, children play with other children or with adults. And the purpose of these games is different. In games with peers, the child hones the acquired knowledge and practical skills.

Games with adults are more cognitive in nature, developing value, since it is with adults that the child learns in the first place. That is, you can quite help the child choose certain games (help, not impose), discuss what and how he played with other children (discuss, not interrogate), or even connect to his favorite games and become for a child a like-minded person - and not an overseer.

Most importantly, with regard to any games, it is necessary to teach the child what is now called life safety - the basics of life safety. The fact that a blow to the head can cause irreparable harm to health, that it is better not to hit the eye with a snowball, that it is better to play football in the yard, and not near the roadway, that you can at least burn yourself with the same firecracker - in general, elementary things!

But here it must be noted that if a child stubbornly continues to fight with sticks, ride on the roof of an elevator, play with matches, etc., and the word “life-threatening” does not matter to him, parents should urgently think about this. Because a decrease in the value of one's own life and health is sometimes a sign of psychological distress in the soul of a child, or in the family in which he grows up.