As a Registered Play Therapist, play is the foundation to the way I help children conceptualize and conquer the world. Play is second nature to children and the way they respond to many of life’s obstacles. Sometimes as parents, it is easy to get into a power match with your children, especially when you want your children to comply with a request and they won’t budge. When this happens, we need to change the way our adult mind thinks and switch it to the way a child thinks. These play recommendations can be used with children as young as toddlerhood all the way to adolescents! I hope they help!
Make it Fun
Let’s say you want your child to clean their room. Cleaning is not typically a desired task for children to complete. So instead of making it a chore, make it fun! Turn on some music and let them dance their way around their room until it’s clean or get out your child’s favorite stuffed animal, doll, or a puppet and have the request come from their toy instead of you. A child will be more likely to respond to an less preferred task by a “friend” or “toy” than to a parent.
Make it Visual
There are an abundance of visual timers you can download from your phone and or find on the internet. Since children have trouble telling time at a young age, when a child has a visual cue that tracks their time, they are more apt to comply to a task because they have a measurable way to know how much time they have to complete it. Visual timers also come in very handy when you want your child to transition to a new task so they know exactly how much time they have to finish the task they are currently working on.
Make it a Game
Let’s say you are trying to get your child dressed for school. Time is running out and you are starting to run late. Your child is running around the house and not listening to you. Sound familiar? If this is something you can relate to, making undesirable tasks a game for your child to comply with what you want will help you! You can use pretend play to make a task like getting dressed fun! Tell your child the house is a volcano and it is about to erupt and your child has to get dressed and out the house before the lava fills up the house. You can also pretend that you are a dinosaur and you can chase after your child around the house until they get the task at hand done!
Make it a Reward Based Competition
If you have a lot of sibling rivalry in your home, you may not want to use this suggestion, but a little healthy competition between siblings can sometimes work in your favor. Give the same task or possibly two similar tasks to your children, and tell them that whoever gets their chores done first wins a prize. For young children the prize might be as simple as a marshmallow. For school aged children, they might like staying up 15 extra minutes after bedtime. And for tweens and adolescents, they might like 15 extra minutes of technology time.
Make it a Race
Let’s say you want your child to make their bed. Get a kitchen timer or use the timer on your phone and time your child how long it takes for them to complete the task. Make a visual chart and track how long it takes for your child to make their bed each day for a week and see if your child can break their personal record each day!
Make it Empowering
This suggestion works best for elementary-aged children, tweens, and adolescents. It is not so much play-based, but an effective way for your child to feel empowered to get the task done! Give your child the prompt of what you want them to accomplish whether it’s their homework, taking out the trash, washing the dishes, or doing the laundry. Give them a time frame to get it done like “I need you to have this done by 4:00pm” or “I need you to have this done before dinner”. This way your child has a deadline and can choose when they do the task within that time frame so they don’t just feel controlled and are being told what to do, especially when they are older and are becoming more independent and autonomous.
Have any other suggestions to add to the list that have worked for you? And when you try these recommendations let me know how they work! I’d love to hear all about it in the comments!!
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