Keeping Kids Engaged

People ask me all the time how to get their kids started in gaming. Undeniably, the benefits of having kids willing to become engaged and stay engaged in an activity that uses no power, encourages cooperation, coordination, getting along, memory, planning, strategy… These things are all things we want in our children. Putting away the screen and involving each other together (or against each other) has been seen time and time again to get harder with every hour we reluctantly concede. And at the end of a long school day, where screens are necessary more and more as a tool of education, families nestling together with a great game without that blue light is a hard thing to aspire to.

I have found a few tips that are really easy to implement in encouraging gaming in children of all ages. My kids are 9 and 12 and I will let you know straight up, one of them is a very reluctant gamer. However, there are steps you can take to steer them towards game time, and there is truly a game for every person out there.

START EARLY

Starting a gaming mentality from an early age is such an important step. Children from a remarkably young age can put two pieces of a puzzle together and gain that real sense of achievement in seeing their results. In this renaissance of gaming card games are developed for children as young as three and even the memory/matching/luck games these days have art and components that even the most discerning parents can enjoy. Suggestions here include Old Maid, Happy Families, Memory, Rock Paper Scissors Duellerz, Animal Upon Animal, Duplo.

NORMALISE GAME TIME

Normalising game time doesn't necessarily mean you have to play Snakes and Ladders on repeat for 4 hours but it does mean you have to be willing to eagerly participate. My husband and I don’t spend an awful lot of time playing games together but we are willing to set aside small pockets of time for either one of us to play with the kids in between making dinner, waiting for appointments or a quiet hour on a Saturday afternoon. Filling smaller pockets with something very casual can be far easier to squeeze into your week than a heavy, multi-hour long-setup game that might be reserved for special occasions or pre-organised game nights. Beneficially, we found that trying to find games in common (we have very different game tastes!) has lead to us finding common ground in surprising ways, and opened conversation even away from game time.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

Simplicity flows on from both the previous points. There is no rule in playing with kids that says a game has to be a mental challenge every time, indeed, I have found that when kids find a game easy to get into, easy to remember the rules to, easy to set up and pack down, these are frequently the most loved and most used games. Connect 4, Sleeping Queens, Rat-a-Tat Cat and Ghost Blitz are long time classics for exactly these reasons. I’ve seen these games played in restaurants, dentist waiting rooms and school yards, the kinds of games that kids can carry in a pocket and whip out at recess. Pokemon and Top Trumps have based multi billion dollar industries on the idea that an opponent doesn't need a whole lunch break to understand the mechanism of the game.

CHANGE IT UP

The range of games available at budget prices now is mind blowing, yet no matter how great your favourite game is, you will get sick to death of it if it’s all you play. Kids need to have choices, otherwise you’ll find yourself playing Shopping List for 3 days over the holidays and wanting to use it for kindling the minute they're back at school. Having Sequence, Battleship, Trouble and Fairy Trails ready to go means having a variety of mechanisms, encouraging varying skills and not having to shudder every time your little sidekick says they’re bored. Having a selection of 3 jigsaws means you don’t have to revisit Anna and Elsa every time you want to make lunch, and having enough choices to “lose” one in the back of the cupboard means when you’re ready to face Ludo again it will feel a little novel to your child, or it may mean that instead of purchasing a whole new game, an expansion to Shopping List will feel like a whole new game itself.

And don’t forget that even while your little person becomes a much bigger and more capable person, those over-loved games that made you shudder through their childhood will be a nostalgic memory and a precious way to reconnect throughout their teenage years. Our big kid has yet to refuse a quick hand of Cabo…