Playing hide-and-seek and make-believe games are more valuable than you think.
Parents and caregivers are a child’s first playmates.
This makes it special. Whether you’re hiding during a game of hide-and-seek or transforming the living room into an imagined pirate cove, you’re building trust and closeness. You’re helping your child develop various skills that will make them healthy, happy adults.
Here are five reasons why enjoying fun and games together lays the foundation for better well-being and lifelong learning:
- Games are crucial for bonding
Hugs and comfort are important, as are smiles and laughter. The cues you give your child while they play encourage them to trust you, find joy in surprises, and explore the world safely. The surprised expressions we often make—mouth open, eyes wide—also help babies prepare, knowing something unusual is about to happen.
Interestingly, it’s not unique to humans. Animals like monkeys and apes also make faces to show their little ones what non-threatening, warm, and familiar behavior looks like.
- Preparing the brain for learning through play
Children and tennis players have a lot in common. When a player serves, they know their opponent is ready to return. This is also what children expect from you.
If a child hides behind their hands, they want you to find them. If you hide, they squirm and giggle. Fun parenting is that predictable back-and-forth pattern. Children thrive because of your warm, responsive reactions.
Brain scans of infants suggest that predictable caregiving and responsiveness are linked to better mental and physical health, empathy, and language learning later on.
As parents, playing together is crucial. Our brains—especially children’s brains—change as we learn. When children do things over and over again, it creates new pathways in the brain (that’s why toddlers’ favorite word is “again!”). So, if children frequently serve without a return, they miss opportunities to build and strengthen valuable connections in the brain. This is especially important because the early stages of a child’s life lay the foundation for their future brain structure.
- Games help children master essential skills
Clapping, holding, stacking, sorting. Play hones a variety of basic skills, from motor skills and eye-tracking to reasoning and language learning. Building a tower lets children practice coordination and balance. Knocking it down shows cause and effect. Because it’s fun and they enjoy the attention from parents, children do these things over and over again—weaving all these developing skills into a mental rope they can use for life.
Through play, children have many opportunities to practice, develop, and combine five key skills, enhancing this ability. These skills are essential during our growth process: social, emotional, physical, cognitive, and creativity.
- Play enhances resilience and relationships
When you put all these skills and experiences together, it’s no wonder that fun parenting can help children cope better with life’s ups and downs.
Pretending to go to school or to the dentist on the first day can make the real moments feel less scary. Pretend play is a great way for children to share feelings, joy, and fear with their parents. It can also help them see things from others’ perspectives, which is crucial for building healthy relationships as they grow.
- Play is beneficial for the whole family
In our “Playing Well” report, we asked 13,000 children and parents about playing at home. The vast majority of parents told us that having time to play well with their children makes them feel good. (Nine out of ten families who play for more than five hours a week said they were very happy. But as playtime decreases, this number drops.)
This happiness can have lasting effects. One study found that Pakistani mothers who learned through a game activity calendar over 10 weeks had fewer depressive symptoms than those who didn’t learn. After 6 months of follow-up, researchers still saw improvements—games can support the mental health of the entire family.
