If I were to see your kid in therapy, I’d play some games with him or her. I know the questions that come up from parents. Why are we paying for him to play games? How is this helping her? How is this making our lives easier?
Playing games with kids, helps build rapport with the child. Really – do we expect a child to go and share their secrets with a total stranger with whom they have no experience of having had a positive interaction. I also use games to see how the child is developmentally, how they cope with challenges and losses and interacting with others but mostly to build rapport and start a basis for a therapeutic relationship and later to strengthen that relationship.
It seems so simple – playing with the child to strengthen a bond – but how often are you doing that at home? The day to day activities of homework and driving to baseball or music lessons and juggling jobs and a million other commitments take its toll. Sitting down to play a game with your child is probably the last thing you feel up to doing.
Try to plan some time to play a board game with your kids. Your child – even the ones who vehemently deny it – does want your attention. Although I think playing board games encourages better interaction and generates more teachable moments even a video game together can encourage rapport. I tell you – back in the day my brother and I would never have had any bonding moments if it weren’t for playing video games together.
Although I genuinely am glad to promote playing and interacting with your kids to improve your relationship with them, I did have an ulterior motive for this post.
I have a question about the board game LIFE.
I was playing LIFE the other day and I wondered why, in this time of amazing technological advances that the playing pieces for this game haven’t changed. The game itself has changed with money amounts updated, careers in IT, and buying SUV’s as options. But those little cars with the blue and pink pegs seem exactly the same as when I was little. You know the ones I’m talking about. You need really good fine motor skills to put them in place and they never stay in and you have loose peg people everywhere. It just seems like someone, sometime could have invented a cool, new upgrade. It must just be one of LIFE’s little mysteries.
