8 Major Benefits of Child-Led Play

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Okay, I know child-initiated play is universal; sometimes, people just need a gentle reminder of the childlike behaviors kids must express to cope with daily stressors. Parents get caught up in so much and forget the value of play because of four walls and concrete jungles. Play is “fundamental to health” and helps children prepare for adulthood.

According to this study, seventy-five percent of children ages 12 and under do not play enough. That is huge! Why? People forget that we are animals that must process behaviors through playful interactions with others.

It is uncommon for kids to sit down and say, “Let’s talk about that one time you really irritated me.” but they might want to play through feelings during a child-led wrestling match or as a dog splashing in mud puddles. Kids want to play and are not going to want to chat about their problems when it’s convenient for their parents.

There are few seven-year-old boys who really love to do that, and I am really sorry you didn’t get one.
Dr. Lawrence Cohen

Here are 8 Major Benefits of Child-led Play.

Brain Development
Helps Kids Cope With Diseases
Improves Relationships
Social Skills
Emotional Intelligence
Body Autonomy
Personal Interests
Uninterrupted Time

This post is created with highly academic sources and includes many different studies proving how valuable play is in early childhood education. If your kids aren’t in school because you are homeschooling, remember this while examining activities and games.

The advantages of play are beyond comprehensible sometimes; play is a necessary component of human learning. If kids are not playing, they keep the yucky toxic feelings in their bodies! There are many important reasons why child-led play is critical for human development! I love reading about this subject, so I hope you find tons of value in this article! I have researched this topic a ton and provided reasons that child-led play is healthy.

What is Child-led Play

Child-led play is an opportunity for children to spontaneously connect with parents, strengthen their bodies and brain, and process emotions. Parents must follow the child’s lead to increase the benefits of child-led play, improving communication, interest, and creativity.

Play has many definitions, from repetitive behaviors that prompt spontaneous exploration to more well-researched definitions that describe it as a ‘volatile act’ done within the person’s provided boundaries. Typically, it is an experience that strengthens particular cognitive patterns, social skills, large and small muscles, and emotions.

Children learn to manage daily stressors during play and enhance their understanding of the world during playful interactions. Kids learn how they want to behave by processing goals and interests.

1. Strengthens the Brain

The brain is a super complex network working together to adapt and behave for the highest chances of survival. Areas of the brain are in charge of different things; moving, talking, feeling, etc. Play is associated with low cortisol levels and encourages the brain to remain flexible.

Baby and toddler brains grow rapidly during the first few years of life. When babies are born, their brain is about a quarter the size of an adult brain and doubles within the first year. By age 3, it is almost fully grown as it shifts and changes to the environment. At 5, human brains are about as big as they get.

Brain areas are in charge of:

cognition
language
motor control
emotional regulation

How Does Play Improve Brain Function?

Certain areas of the brain change during playful experiences, which prepares them for school, develops the prefrontal cortex, and strengthens executive function. Playful interactions with parents form connections that stimulate different areas crucial for healthy development.

These areas build executive function, which controls attention span, inhibition, shifting attention, and memory. It also helps children prepare for school and learning.

The brain connects normal day-to-day experiences like getting fed, going for walks, and dressing through play. Kids rely on playful interactions to relieve stress and anxiety and release harmful toxins from the body that accumulate during daily stressors.

Child-led play, in particular, is helpful for brain development because it encourages healthy relationships and communication patterns with adults and puts them in charge of their learning.

People live in stressful environments forcing adults to make decisions for their children; “hold my hand while walking across the street.” for example. Play gives children the chance to release tension and process challenging situations that generally feel out of their control.

Other Ways Child-led Play Promotes Brain Development

School readiness
Executive function
Creativity
Pro-social skills
Problem-solving
Memory
Collaboration
Survival skills
Curiosity
Anxiety
Relationships
Language
Math

2. May Help Children Cope With Chronic Diseases

Did you know that play may help children struggling with a disease?

Children with chronic childhood diseases are likely to have more physical, cognitive, and social issues later in life due to stressful living arrangements and lack of play.

More research needs to be done on this topic in particular, but the consensus is that it doesn’t harm a child with a chronic illness; it should be developmentally appropriate and used to promote brain development.

Does Play Help a Child’s Health and Wellbeing?

Child-led play is vital for healthy brain development because it strengthens brain areas in charge of attention, memory, and impulse. Play encourages creativity and teaches children different ways to cope.

According to this study, children suffering from diseases like “cystic fibrosis, cancer, congenital heart defects, or auto-immune diseases” suffer severely because they cannot play. The study also says that play suffers in children with mental illnesses like “depression, anxiety, autism, disruptive behavioral disorders, ADHD, and schizophrenia.”

Other childhood diseases are cerebral palsy, asthma, diabetes, and vision disorders.

Ways play helps children suffering from diseases:

Play encourages physical activity.
Children cope with the illness through play.
It improves cognitive development.
Helps them adapt to the healthcare environment.
Therapeutic play allows children to process their health.
Play helps when children are bored.
They achieve developmental milestones.

From a developmental perspective, play allows children to experiment with their behavioural and social repertoire, and to practice their physical and communication skills.
Healthy play, better coping: The importance of play for the development of children in health and disease – ScienceDirect

3. Improves Relationships

Children who are allowed to direct play gain more of the benefits of play when compared to children playing by an adult’s rules. Adult-led play has some advantages, like organization and structure. However, the benefits of child-led play experiences outweigh adult-led situations because children still follow adult rules and consider the adult’s concerns over their own.

Child-led games release anxiety, boost confidence, and challenge the status quo, ultimately improving relationships and family communication.

How Does Play Build Relationships?

When children play with their parents or caregivers, they are fully immersed in their ideas and goals and are free from adult-led structure. Child-led play allows children to direct and control their environment, teaching them about the world, their peers, and vital relationships.

More Reasons Child-led Play Improves Relationships.

Fear is released during play, especially when children get to imitate, control, or lead a game. Imagine a child who wants to play a game involving taking the adult’s shoe on and off. Many parents may cringe at the idea; imagine how kids feel the dozens of times a week parents cram their kid’s foot in a shoe.

A game like this releases tension built over many experiences with the adult and the child. The child will laugh, giggle, and mimic the parent as they force the shoe on and off their feet. This shouldn’t be treated as an annoyance; consider it their way of talking about their feelings while connecting with an adult.

Confidence is boosted as children manage emotions and learn to ask for things they need with playful parents. When children and parents value new ideas, they all learn to communicate to understand one another’s goals and fears.

Children understand their ideas have value when their games are respected, heard, and validated. They lead their own interests, increasing confidence in their skills and the ability to follow passions and creative thinking. They want to share their ideas more with caregivers and adults who care to learn more about their personal goals.

Kids learn to negotiate ideas, challenge others’ behaviors, and problem-solve with the family during playful interactions. Children are taken seriously and learn that they don’t have to be compliant because they value and consider others’ fears, improving connection, communication, and relationships.

A child will understand that an adult may not prefer getting kicked in the stomach and request that you move the chair before they swing. Child-led games are best when the games become, “I bet I can’t kick you while I swing.” This is an opportunity for connection; the child will probably dictate how many steps forward and backward you should take for a slight tap of a show and freedom from the game.

4. Encourages Social Skills

Play is essential for healthy social interactions because it helps people bond, communicate, and value personal space. When kids play silly games with parents and caregivers, they learn that everyone is unique with particular interests.

After families engage in child-led interactions, they will likely respect others’ boundaries more because they have had the opportunity to understand and listen to one another.

Why Play is Important for Social Skills and Development

Child-led play promotes children’s language and communication skills. Kids learn to collaborate and adapt to others’ opinions while staying emotionally regulated, secure, and articulate. Play is an invitation to connect with others, accepted in many communities as critical for social development.

Kids build social skills during child-led play by practicing:

language
empathy
communication
adaptability
collaboration

Social development improves because children learn different non-verbal cues during play. Consider this; you are playing with your child and making a funny face because they pinched your butt. Children identify pleasure and pain through bodily cues and facial expressions, making them better friends and companions.

Children learn different language skills during child-led play. New words, themes, and concepts are introduced during play that help reinforce social issues and conversations. It isn’t stressful during play, so kids are likely to understand better when it isn’t a lecture or traditional assignment.

When children are involved in play, a great deal of perspective-taking takes place. Not only are they releasing anxiety and stress, but they are also learning to be empathic and compassionate toward others; they understand the other person. Dramatic play is excellent for this too!

Cooperation is another reason children learn through child-led play. When they experience it with another trusted adult, they are likely to solve problems and cooperate with others during their social interactions with friends and neighbors. Because they get to practice beforehand, they can relive stressful situations before adapting to another’s opinion.

5. Emotional Intelligence Gets Reinforced

Children follow patterns of fear, happiness, and excitement when they control their environment. Complex play helps children identify feelings and anticipate social cues.

They adapt through different social dilemmas and see types of dialogue that mimic previous conversations and patterns.

Eventually, children understand other emotions and are more patient with people’s feelings, helping them manage personal stressors.

How Does Play Help Children’s Emotional Development?

Child-led play reinforces critical dialogue through role-playing as children seek solutions to their everyday problems. They learn about self-regulation, patience, and emotions during playful experiences with adult caregivers.

Parents help children identify, label, and process emotions through child-led play. Perhaps they are playing a game, and the child is pretending to be a dinosaur. The child might reflect on how they felt the previous night when asked to finish dinner.

“The baby dinosaur was mad when his dinosaur mommy made him eat his chicken.” they might say.

Parents should help them understand their emotions so they learn that it is a typical part of being human.

A parent might respond, “Well, it is my job to keep you healthy. I wasn’t trying to make you mad.”

Children will go to a trusted adult with feelings before impulsively clocking someone in the head with a block during an argument. They know what feelings mean to them and how they arise in their bodies during emotion regulation.

Emotional regulation leads to higher academic success, better friendships, and pro-social behaviors. This happens when children learn they can control their feelings and emotions. When kids feel safe with parents and family members, they identify challenging situations through play and think of ways to manage anxiety and stress related to social interactions with peers.

6. Kids Have More Body Autonomy

You have seen it before, right? –The child who craves the correct position on the balance beam or the highly competitive soccer player.

Perhaps, your child prefers climbing rock walls at all the exact spots they mastered the last time. My children love ropes, hanging bars, and monkey bars.

Some kids love having control of their bodies and want to practice gross motor skills until the sun goes down.

How Play Helps Support Physical Development and Independence

Play supports children’s physical independence by allowing them to express themselves through movement that is set at their developmental level. They learn about different people’s bodies, preferences, and ways to navigate different environments.

Children stay physically fit by learning coordination, balance, and agility. They are in control of their bodies, and the pace is personal to their own development. They are typically free to make choices about their body and how it moves naturally throughout the environment.

Physical play releases endorphins, encouraging children to associate memories with gross motor activities and use fitness for boredom. They remember that they felt good when they mastered jumping off the swing or climbing the ropes, and they want to try again.

Parents reinforce bodily consent and teach them it is okay to control their bodies while learning preferences about how they want to physically handle themselves. They learn confidence and self-discipline during this awareness, understanding how they want to be handled, touched, and played with.

Conversations about bodily preferences begin when children learn that they have their rights and other children have theirs, encouraging them to ask questions and participate in discussions surrounding body contact, healthy relationships, and physical interactions.

Parents help children develop skills by reminding them of their passions and previously mastered skills. Sometimes kids just need a reminder of the structure they have climbed or the sport they already practiced before going in for another turn. Adults should follow their lead while giving gentle reminders of their acquired physical skills.

7. Personal Interests Are Explored

Tiny people require respect like anyone else. They want their creations to come to life and their movie ideas on the big screen. Will they ever see what is in their head come true?

When parents and caregivers play with children to support their goals, they certainly can within certain limitations.

Adults can brainstorm, journal, scrapbook, and record their children playing and negotiating ideas to help them remember the special times they had and value their unique personalities.

We cherish my son’s dimensional art and support his ideas by taking pictures and hanging them on the wall. Recently, he made a tropical forest with pieces of a broken basket, plastic frogs, ribbon, sticks, shrinky dinks, wine corks, and old game pieces.

The Importance of Playing to Support Children’s Interests

Kids understand that their ideas have value when they get reinforced. Parents acknowledge their activities and facilitate their child’s actions by reflecting on different ways to succeed at a challenging task.

Children process goals when they know their interests are values and understood by adult caregivers.
They are more creative with their ideas as they use their imagination and skillset together to make their vision come alive.
Kids take risks and cope with their challenges as they arise, maintaining their confidence and personal exploration.

During child-led play, kids will talk about their projects through story-telling, puppets, and rough and tumble time. There are so many more ways children want to play; those are just a few!

Adults can adapt their playtime to incorporate their children’s unique ideas and game suggestions, so they get excited about trying out their ideas. They might want to try to create a board game, staple old pictures together, or hot glue ribbon pieces together.

By improving communication through play, they learn from their mistakes, ask more questions, and take on more challenging projects.

8. Uninterrupted Time

Children learn to control themselves and their impulses because they can play at their own pace. They are unhurried, and there is no pressure from the adult when they get to engage in child-led play.

Highly scheduled play causes children to make quicker decisions, limiting their control over their impulses. Kids and adults are entirely focused on the child’s behaviors and strengthen the relationship together through the slow child-directed pace.

Because they feel unhurried, they are likely to value their decisions more and gain more brain-body connections, which helps children achieve higher levels of self-control.

The Importance of Uninterrupted Play

When children are allowed an appropriate amount of time to explore their ideas, they are likely to be more involved, creative, and dedicated to a task. Parents who set aside a particular amount of time for children to be involved in their play help them reinforce their interests as they identify potential problems.

Unstructured playtime allows children to feel power and control over their environment, learn language skills, and strengthen neural pathways.

This study determined that children in unstructured playtime had “better self-regulated executive function,” and older children had a higher vocabulary and verbal patterns. The more children were involved in self-directed activities, the more they were “in better self-directed control” of their play patterns.

Here are some reasons uninterrupted playtime is healthy for young children.

Attention-span
Stress-levels
Impulse Control
Mindfulness
Happiness
Playfulness

Major transitions are hard for kids; they require uninterrupted playtime to reconnect with themselves and to process the events that interrupted their ideas. It is highly stressful for children to be moved from one activity to the next when they do not understand the previous experience. They may have questions, suggestions, or comments they want to express.

Unstructured playtime and mindfulness routines have been found to improve happiness and wellbeing in children. Both combined help children cope with daily stressors and have been shown to improve mental health.