Playing With Your Child-It’s Like Super Juice, Vitamins and Physical Activity Smooshed Together

I always find it amazing that the one thing that can make the biggest difference in a child’s life isn’t the newest toy, the funniest TV show, or the fanciest books. It is you, their parent! Talking, playing, singing and reading are the magical ingredients. These daily interactions impact your child’s language, how soon they learn to read, and their brain development. Over the next four blogs, I will be focusing on each of these and how you can incorporate prayer in these moments as well.

This week, I will be focusing on play. There are two types of play, structured and unstructured. Structured play offers the chance to provide rules or guidelines to what your child is doing. For example, if you were playing a game of hide and seek, there are rules that you must follow-one person hides, the other counts to 10 and then tries to find the one that is hiding. Oh and no peeking! This week though, I would like to focus on unstructured play. This is really any unstructured time that offers your child the opportunity to have fun, be creative and be engaged with you and with materials.

Of course play looks different at different ages, but I’d like to share the general ideas for how to support play (and all the awesome benefits that come with it) at different ages and stages of your child’s life.

For your baby, play may not yet be in the way you often picture it (pushing cars around, feeding a baby doll), however, babies love to explore different objects and interact with people. At this age, play is not just about placing toys in front of them to look at, bat at and manipulate (although this is good for them too). It is about the interactions you have with them during this time. When you have a few moments between laundry and dishes, sit on the floor with them for a few minutes and move an interesting object around slowly side to side or up and down. Your baby will follow it with their eyes. You can also hide it for a moment, and then pull it back out with a “surprise!” Remember that you don’t have to only have toys. There are so many interesting objects they can explore, with different textures, sounds, and shapes. As you play with them in these moments, talk with them. You can talk about anything really; what you see them doing, about the toys they are playing with, how much you love them. You can also use these moments to pray with them. You might pray thankfully for your babies development as you see them adding new skills, such as grasping, moving from hand to hand, etc. You might pray for these sweet moments with them during the busy day. You might pray for their future as they continue to grow and learn.

As your baby becomes a toddler, they will begin to add more talking and interaction into their play. It will be less one sided! Through exploration, they are learning more and more about the world around them. As you sit and play with them, remember to let them try new materials on their own first and then challenge them with a new way to use the material and see what they do! You can now begin to give a direction (such as put the block in the cup). They will also begin to pretend! Dolls and toy telephones will allow them the chance to imitate what they see you doing every day! Finally they are now on the move! This means that play with them can be very active! Asking them to run after a ball or climb through a box can be super fun for them! And while you are playing with them spend a moment praying as well. You can pray for the changes you are seeing in them as you see the joy in their eyes as you “answer the phone” and tell them it is for them! You can pray for the giggles you hear as they chase after the ball, falling down a couple of times as they run. You can pray for their joy as they figure something out, like pouring sand from one cup to another. These are all such big accomplishments for them and thanking God for those moments to see them is important.

As your toddler moves into the preschool years, you will start seeing a lot more independence-wanting to do things on their own. Just because they are more independent, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be engaged in their play, it just means that your role has changed a bit. You are now in a support role, thinking about what materials are best for them based on what they can do and what they are learning to do. With independence also comes a desire to have choices, so make sure you have a couple for them. Finally, by being actively involved, you have the opportunity to support them in problem solving when they can’t figure something out. The best materials are open ended (such as blocks, craft supplies, and puzzles). While they are playing, you can also spend a few moments praying with and for them as well. You can pray for your own patience as they figure out who they are and how to be independent with you as a support base when needed. You can pray for their exploration and desire to try new things, that they will always keep this sense of adventure and curiosity. Finally you can pray that they will continue to love learning new things.

As you are reading this, I absolutely understand that you may feel overwhelmed. Whether you have one child or multiple children; whether your child is a newborn or an independent preschooler-let’s face it, there is a LOT going on! You may feel like you are not sure if you have the energy, time or creativity to do this. But trust me-you’ve got this!

I also want to make sure that you recognize that while the title compares play to super juice, vitamins and physical activity, the point is not to prescribe but rather to do. For example, when you start a health plan, you decide how often you will exercise, which vitamins you will take and how many times you will drink juice a day. But when we are talking about play, it is less about specifics and rather about intentionally setting aside time to do it. You may have weeks that are so busy, you only get 5-10 minutes at the end of the day. And then there may be weeks that you have time to enjoy several play sessions each day. The goal is to enjoy time with your child playing and the outcome is always beneficial regardless of the amount of time you are able to give that day. You don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to have a plan, you just have to be present and enjoy that time together.

If you would like ideas for your child or have a question about development and what to expect, I would be honored to support you with information. Please reach out to me and let me know.

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Also be on the lookout for my next blog which will focus on praying in the every day moments of reading.