A child’s play skills are important for their mental and physical health. It is important to let children entertain themselves on their own. This allows them to learn to overcome their challenges without your help and leads to a happier home.
Free play helps children develop their motor skills and avoid childhood obesity. It also builds creativity.
1. It Builds Your Child’s Confidence
Children play for fun, but they also need it to learn to be confident. Confidence doesn’t come naturally for everyone, especially kids who may feel pressure to perform and excel in academics, sports, music and other activities. Parents can help their children build confidence by screening out people who pull them down and fostering healthy relationships with others, including teachers, coaches and religious leaders.
They can build their physical confidence with games like hide-and-seek and tag, and their social skills through the exploration of dolls and group play. They can also develop their fine motor skills through creative play, such as building models and using clay.
When adults participate in a child’s play, they can encourage their creativity and teach them the value of persistence. They can also practice giving balanced feedback, such as praising a child for racing hard and trying their best instead of just focusing on winning. This also teaches them that losing is okay and that other people can be winners too.
2. It Strengthens Your Relationship
There is nothing more special than watching kids play and having fun. This activity not only helps them develop great interpersonal skills, strong bones and muscles, and wide imagination, but it also fills their lives with happiness.
Children need entertainment because it encourages them to try new things and learn from their mistakes. It can even help them overcome boredom, which in turn leads to a variety of activities, like creating their own games and exploring their creative side.
However, some parents are known to fastidiously cut down on their child’s entertainment in order to keep them focused on schoolwork. This can be a mistake, as it has been proven that a bit of distraction can actually boost your concentration and attention span. This is why many schools now use educational toys and games to teach their students. This method is a lot more effective than conventional classroom activities.
3. It Gives You Quality Time With Your Child
Playing with your child is not only good for him or her, but it’s also a great way to spend quality time together. In fact, it releases the hormone oxytocin, which is known to strengthen your relationship and creates a bond of closeness. You can spend quality time with your kids by playing games like charades, I spy or catch. You can also go for a walk and observe nature or even look at the stars.
Moreover, children need to know how to entertain themselves in order to grow into healthy adults. In addition, solo play is great for building independence and confidence and improving creativity and problem-solving skills.
You can help your children entertain themselves by providing them with open-ended toys that they can use in different ways, such as LEGO, crayons or a dollhouse. In addition, you should read books and tell stories to them and encourage them to pretend play based on these stories.
4. It Gives You a Chance to Embrace Your Childhood
Kids love to be free and play makes them happiest. They need to learn how to entertain themselves because it will help them deal with stress, develop patience, and improve their ability to focus on a task for longer periods of time.
It also allows them to build creativity and problem-solving skills. Plus, it will allow them to develop their imagination and make friends. Parents often tell their children to cut down on entertainment and focus solely on schoolwork during examinations, but this is counterproductive as kids need to relax & have fun from time to time.
Inner child work helps you reclaim the creativity and vitality you experienced as a kid, which is something you need in your adult life when bills and other responsibilities pile up. If you were hurt as a kid, connecting with your childhood emotions can help heal these wounds. Moreover, it can help you become more open to expressing negative as well as positive feelings.