Play More to Fight Less: How Play Can Address Most Power Struggles

What is your relationship with play or being playful? For most of us, your answer is probably somewhere in between “What the heck is she talking about?” and “Hey, I play with my kids!” For most adults, all the adulting that we do makes it difficult to be very playful. And I get it, who feels playful when we’re working, raising kids, and doing all the other seemingly endless tasks required to just keep moving through life? I’m here to tell you that adding more play and playfulness will go a long way to making the rest of those tasks not only more tolerable but also more fun. When it comes to play, kids have a clear advantage. They naturally seem to thrive in playful environments, are constantly asking for more play, and they would rather play over virtually anything else in their worlds. And why not? Play is fun, it usually includes some level of physical activity and whether they know it or not, it is teaching them life lessons that they’ll take with them far into the future. This is why bringing more play and playfulness into your life and your parenting will make you happier, but also improve the connection you have with your kids and encourage more cooperation. 

Before you dismiss it as just another “thing” to add more time to your already thinly stretched availability, it won’t. It might even make these tasks go faster: you’ll have extra hands and you’ll be spending less time trying to coerce your child into helping out more.

Play is a child’s love language:  This is by far the easiest way to connect with your kids. From encouraging them to participate in more household chores to getting them to comply with some of your requests like putting their shoes away every day, if you employ more play into these tasks, I can all but guarantee an uptick in participation and cooperation from your kids. But what does that mean? How do we get our kids to cooperate with play? Tuning in to the kind of play your child enjoys most will help answer this question. If your child is more competitive, then create more games and competitions. For example: I know that if I “challenge” my son to see who can get dressed faster when he’s protesting this task, almost 100% of the time he cannot resist my challenge. If you have a more imaginative play child, then use that to your advantage, and create imaginary stories to help them complete these tasks.

No one wants to feel controlled: Think about the number of decisions that are made for a child in their day-to-day lives, from when they have to leave for school, to what they wear, how long they are away from home, what they eat, to when they go to bed. The more you can incorporate play into those tasks, the less they tend to feel controlled. Play sends signals to the brain that “this is fun” and they’ll be more willing to follow along with the things you need from them, without feeling like their autonomy is being stripped from them.

It's science: The human brain contains something called “neural pathways.” Think of them as the communication pathways between neurons. When we do things repeatedly, we are building up those neural pathways. Some things that we do might have negative associations, and so the more we do them over and over, it reinforces that experience as negative (maybe this is why I still hate yardwork as an adult). Now imagine if those experiences, still being repeated over and over had a positive association. The brain picks up on this and connects positivity to the experience instead. So, if we try making the bed fun, instead of a chore, as our kids get older, they will come to have a positive association with the task, instead of a negative one. Play is also a form of emotional regulation. Healthy play can be a great way to regulate children, from getting their wiggles out through movement, to imagination and story time, kids thrive when play is part of their daily activities.

Play teaches our kids crucial life skills: Play is one of the best ways to teach kids almost any skill you can imagine, from fine and gross motor skills such as working with blocks and climbing trees to more nuanced emotional and social skills like cooperation and conflict resolution. The more kids are exposed to play in different forms, the more they will inevitably be presented with these challenges, and the more they’ll be able to learn from and navigate them. If your child struggles with rigidity, sharing, or really any skill, the first step should be to employ more playtime.

Adding more playfulness to your parenting can help most tricky situations become a little less so. It will naturally lighten the mood and create more positive connections between you and your child, while also teaching them life-long skills. If you struggle with this aspect of your parental role or need more help employing ideas for more playfulness in your parenting journey, let's chat! Together we will get you where you want to be.