During most of a child’s growth, kids spend several hours each day playing with parents, siblings, and friends. Games play a crucial role in children’s development, fostering various aspects of their growth.
Benefits of Games for Children in 2024:
Building a Sense of Security: Childhood games contribute to establishing a child’s sense of security. For newborns, facing the unfamiliar world can lead to insecurity, expressed through crying, their primary means of conveying “helplessness.” Spending time with parents, engaging in activities like cuddling, singing nursery rhymes, and rocking the cradle, helps parents establish a sense of security for newborns, aiding in stabilizing their emotions.
Enriching Emotional Development: Games enrich children’s emotional experiences. Games serve as the primary means for children to communicate, interact, and “fit into” the world. When parents play with newborns, mirroring their smiles when they smile, it teaches children to recognize emotional changes. As children grow older, teaching them basic words to express their feelings, such as “happy,” “sad,” or “angry,” encourages them to exhibit appropriate behavior when feeling down, expressing their emotions and needs constructively rather than resorting to extreme behaviors like throwing tantrums.
Promoting Sensory Development: Engaging in games enhances children’s sensory development, aiding in better connecting with the world around them. For infants under one year old, activities like singing or rhythmic movements stimulate their auditory senses, which are the first to develop. For children older than one year, engaging in various sensory activities such as touching objects or creating shapes with homemade dough facilitates sensory development.
Fostering Physical Growth: Games contribute to both physical and psychological well-being in children. Playing promotes hand-eye coordination, fine-tunes motor skills, and enhances the strength of upper and lower limbs. Activities like crawling, running, pushing, pulling, and other game-related movements improve agility and flexibility.
Building Confidence: Playing challenging games with children, such as rolling a ball or playing hide-and-seek, allows them to gain confidence. When a child successfully rolls a rubber ball to you or finds a toy successfully hidden between sofa cushions, they gain confidence. Appropriate praise from parents encourages the child’s spirit of exploration. Facing unfamiliar or challenging situations prompts children to actively learn and persist in practice, fostering independence.
Boosting Curiosity: Curiosity is a primary way to stimulate a child’s interest in the world. If a child becomes curious about something, it drives them to explore actively.
Children’s Games in 2024: An Essential Way of Learning
Children’s games serve as a means for children to explore and understand the world. Through games, children learn about emotional changes and expressions, develop social skills through cooperative play, and adapt to interacting comfortably with peers. Games involving interaction with strangers help reduce children’s overreliance on parents. Pretend play aids children in learning basic motor and life skills. For children who have yet to develop judgment, scientifically designed games are crucial for their growth and learning.
