"Ma-a-a-am, Play With Me!" Correct Games - Self-development, Society

"Ma-a-a-am, play with me!" - a phrase that every parent hears from time to time. And everyone copes with this request in their own way: submissively goes to the nursery, refers to being busy, or pretends to build a house, and with the other hand wanders through the vastness of social networks. Not all dads and mothers love and know how to play with children, but this can be learned.

Play is as much a need for a child as sleep, food, rest and physical activity. There is a lot of value behind the apparent uselessness of the game. Children play up exciting experiences, try to repeat the behavior of adults, develop different skills, and fantasize. Joint play helps to establish contact, get rid of stress, fears, and get to know each other's needs and interests better.

By the rules and without

To understand how objects can interact, the child needs the help of elders. The parent indicates that cubes can be stacked or thrown into a bucket, stacked on top of each other, and built into houses. The kid begins to repeat after him.

• Set aside a certain amount of time to play together, but at this hour fully engage in the gameplay. Put things aside, talk on the phone, turn off the TV.
• Don't try to reduce all shared activities to learning. Focus on good mood and pleasure.
• Match toys by age and interest. If you do not know what to buy, pay attention to what your little one is reaching out to at a party or in the sandbox, what his peers are playing.
• If you bought a new toy, be sure to show you how to play it. What is obvious to you is not always clear to a two-year-old.
• Offer your options, but do not force them to play what the child does not like. The same activity can get boring: a toy you loved yesterday may not like it today.
• If you want to show your child something new, but he does not show interest, start playing yourself, and the baby will definitely join you.

Joint play should be colored with positive emotions. Do not impose, do not criticize. Find a reason for praise.

Everything has its time

The baby was recently born and is ready to play. He looks at your face, tries to copy your facial expressions. He doesn't speak, but remembers everything well. Nursery rhymes, songs, stroking, some kind of manipulation, accompanied by gentle words. A rotating mobile, pictures, rattles are in motion.

After six months, the child begins to sit, and the games become more difficult. The kid can independently shake various objects, make sounds with their help, or press the buttons of a musical toy. A demonstration of extracting these very sounds will come in handy on your part. Popular at this age are "goat", "ladushki" and other similar games. There is a growing interest in books with bright pictures.

At one and a half to two years, children begin to master the first role-playing games. They "cook" porridge, pump and feed their baby dolls. You can tell them the next steps - the doll is hungry, cold, tired, wants to handle.

Children with great pleasure explore and try on various professions - teacher, doctor, salesman, policeman. To do this, you can come up with costumes, some kind of paraphernalia that can most often be found in every home, or cut out of cardboard.

Children love it very much when parents make toys, furniture or clothes for dolls with their own hands. For me personally, one of the warmest childhood memories was a paper doll and a house out of a box, which my mother made for me.

With age, the choice of joint activities becomes wider and more individual. The best thing you can do is ask the child himself what he would like to play.

Down with stereotypes

Almost everyone knows the full set of girls' games, and the interests of boys in the representation of adults are often limited to cars, battles of superheroes, monsters and other "evil spirits". Meanwhile, it is also useful for boys to play with dolls, help their mother around the house, try on different professions, including a cook and a teacher. Aggression is diligently cultivated in future men. But who are we trying to raise?

Do we need insensitive heroes or good husbands, caring fathers and responsible workers who can be not only police and soldiers, but teachers, doctors and just leaders? So let's not get carried away with guns, tanks and soldiers, but diversify the child's play arsenal with a teddy bear, a couple of dolls, a set of dishes, plastic products and a cash register. There is also nothing reprehensible in the fact that the girl loves football. Siblings of different sex enjoy playing both mothers-daughters and cars.

The BBC has conducted an interesting social experiment. The kids were changed from boys to girls and vice versa. Each was led into a room with toys and an unfamiliar adult was invited to play with the child for a few minutes. So, for games with "girls" adults chose dolls or something soft, pink, fluffy. And the "boys" were offered cars, robots and puzzles. This stereotypical thinking was demonstrated by both men and women

I don't like to play

Parents often play “I don’t want to” or even refuse to give their child this kind of attention. You, of course, are not obliged to play all day, but you need to allocate some time for "idleness" and learn to enjoy it. Even 15 minutes of playing together is valuable for a child.

To make it easier to play, choose what you find most interesting and enjoyable. Avoid games that annoy you and cause you boredom. Dad or other relatives can play what you don't like.

If you're too busy, create a game straight from your household chores. When helping to cut cucumbers or stirring a salad, you can imagine yourself as a cook, dusting with a janitor, collecting toys around the apartment as a lifeguard.

There are options for the laziest of parents, but they can only be used from time to time. You can become a garage, a track, a tunnel, and the child will enthusiastically roll cars around you while you are lying on the couch. Or arrange a home concert. We turn on the music, hand the child a hairbrush instead of a microphone, point to the "stage" and enjoy his improvisations.

To understand what it is like to play with children, you can turn to the example of popular video bloggers. They play professionally, and they also get paid for it. It is not at all necessary to film your games with your child on camera, but you can draw interesting stories: fairy tales from doll figures, competitions, crafts and tastings.

Wand-educator

If you want to fix a problem, try doing it through the game. For example, think of a mischievous hero Nehochukhu. Let him not want anything, but your son must certainly heal him. Let him try to explain why he is like that, and come up with a remedy for this ailment. You will depict how the harm was cured, and everyone around is rejoicing, praising Nehochukha, they want to play with him. "It used to be very difficult to be friends with you, but now it's good and fun!" - the teddy bear Pooh and the donkey Eeyore summarize.

A conflict situation in a family can be staged between any two toys - let them fight, be greedy, but in the end they find the right way out and make peace. If Bunny is a coward, let him dare with the help of magic friends or a wise mentor.

What you say bored in the kitchen will be well received in the nursery while playing. The allegory will help you not to be rebuffed. Through the game, you can ask for forgiveness or explain something about which you were not comfortable starting a conversation

Offer to complete the task "Create your own world". Now almost every home has kinetic sand, which is very easy to handle. Find a wide, shallow box or lid with sides, fill it with sand, take out a bag of small toys, and have your child create his own world. It is not necessary to look for the meanings of figures and images in anthologies.

Ask your child to talk about their creation. Who lives there? Where is he? How do its inhabitants interact? What is the weather? How are they doing? And listen, listen … Children often do not share their problems. They still do not know how to express them out loud or are shy. And in the game it all comes to the surface. Everything you hear will be a sincere and deep story about your family.

Remember that any game for a child is a field for development, training of motor skills, memory, imagination, gaining new experience, and achieving a goal. Play is a rehearsal for adulthood. Not shopping, not educational activities or mountains of sweets, but a tea party with cubes instead of cake, Teddy bear and Nastya doll. The time spent with the child in the game will be a sign of your love for him.