Help Your Child Have Better Behavior with These Playful Tools

When you look for a child play therapist in the Denver Metro area, you are looking for an expert! In fact, child psychologists use play as one of the most important tools  in our toolbox to help kids have a better time at home and at school. If your child is showing challenges with behavior, problems regulating emotions, or if you feel like you are overwhelmed by all of the parenting stress, try some of these playful tools and see how a little fun can make your day better!

Child Psychologists use Play to Tackle Challenging Behaviors

Deep down underneath most behavior challenges is a developmental need that your child is trying to meet. When your two-year-old screams “I can do it myself!” when your 8-year-old flings his math homework across the room, or when your tween rolls their eyes at you, these are your child’s attempts to build self-reliance, to manage distress and frustration, and to express a difference in opinion and values. But, as you’ve seen (and maybe shared with your child psychologist!), some of these developmental needs aren’t getting met the right way, or in a way that is socially acceptable. That’s where play can make a big impact—you have the chance to engage and interact with your child around these difficult topics in a safe space. Can you make up a game to help your toddler learn those self-reliance skills on her own? Can you help your elementary schooler draw out the frustrations that come with learning new skills? Can you get your tween to use words to express feelings—or at least to come out of her room? When you approach a problem in a playful manner, you quash the power struggle and meet your child in their space, not the adult world.

Playful Parents Help Kids Manage Big Feelings Better

Play is big business—including for researchers! In fact, a research group found in 2023 that parents who are playful with their children see less anxiety, depression, and unkind behaviors in their children. Play may improve emotional regulation and help kids to stay more positive and less defiant. How can you be playful? Try these ideas from a Littleton Play Therapist:

• For worries or fears, transform the worry into something silly. Monster under the bed? Draw it… then draw it with underpants on its head! Scared of spiders? Imagine a spider who is more afraid of people, picking up each of its tiny spider legs and going “eek!” every time a human walks by!
• For negativity or defeatism, embrace hyperbole. Is your child upset about the cold weather, like it will never be summer again? Play a game pretending it is endless winter! Get as silly as you can—maybe pretend you built a slushy pool with ice cubes to float on—your goal is to get a laugh, and for your child to realize “that will never happen!”
• For refusals or defiance, try to get your child to engage—with you, and with the task. Admit it, you don’t like to pick up your dirty socks either, but you do it because it has to be done. So, when your child doesn’t want to do chores or homework, recognize that fact and then find a fun way to approach the task. Can you have a race to pick up clothes? A competition to find the “stinkiest” socks (some kids love gross stuff!)? Do the clothes all have little personalities, and want to go for a “swim” in the washing machine? Take a tip from video games : by making onerous tasks part of a story or a game, your child may find the motivation they need.
• Special playtime: There’s a whole treatment (Parent Child Interaction Therapy) that actually teaches you how to play with your child! A key component of this is “special playtime” a 5-minute, child-directed, distraction-free time where you just play with your child. Combined with other tools, this can create amazing behavior change! Just playing with your child for 5 minutes a day can improve behaviors.

You know your child best, so find something that appeals to them. As adults, we manage our emotions by recognizing them and working through them; when you offer play to your child, you are sharing the message that you recognize what they are feeling and you want to “work through it” with them.

Moms and Dads: The Doctor Says it’s Playtime!

If you’ve reached this part of the article and are feeling only dread about “having” to be playful—think again. Family therapists and parent counseling specialists across the Denver Metro area know that play isn’t just helpful for children, it helps the parents, too! Parenting is stressful, especially if you take it too seriously. Fortunately, parents who spend time being playful with their kids get a benefit for themselves—reporting less stress, more enjoyment, and lower depressive symptoms. Worried about “passing on” depressive or anxious traits to your child? Play is the answer—even if you are struggling emotionally, play can help your child adapt and adjust.

Grab the crayons, practice your silliest voice, and get ready to play silly! If there’s laughter, you’re doing it right. If you need more help on how to be playful with your child, or how to embrace play as an intervention for unwanted behaviors, call a child psychologist. Littleton’s best play therapists work with the child and their whole family to promote amazing changes in behaviors and feelings!

Source: Shorer, M., Zilker, N., Salomon, A., & Spiegelman, N. (2023). Parental playfulness as a mediator of the association between parents’ emotional difficulties and children’s psychosocial adjustment. Early Child Development and Care, 193(9–10), 1173–1187. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2023.2243395