The Importance of Game in Children’s Development Bertha Parra Lemus (psychologist)

If we spent a whole day with a child, we would realize that the entire day goes by from one game to another. Everybody knows that most preschool little kids activities are based on games. But we hardly ever think how important and transcendent it is for children development. Furthermore, many times we hear adults saying: “All he does is play”. Well, in fact, a child’s job is to play. A child who does not play will become an adult who does not work. Play is to a child what work is to an adult.

Children grow, stimulate their senses, strengthen their muscles, coordinate what they see and learn to control their body by playing. They discover the world and discover themselves through games. They acquire new skills and become more competent in the cognitive, social, emotional, motor, physical and language fields, it means that it contributes to develop every and each of the areas involved in children development.

Some researchers classify children games into social and cognitive. The first one refers to the participation and interaction of children with other children during the game. While the second one reflects the level of mental development of the child. Let’s explain each one in more detail.

Social games are those where children interact among them in different degrees. As a child grows, his/her games tend to be more social and cooperative. At first they play alone, later they play next to other children and finally they play with other children. The environment is very important for the development of the social game, that means, if the child spends long time alone, has a few or none siblings, watches too much television or has very elaborated and complicated games, he/she will tend to play alone much longer, because his environment could have made him/her a more passive child who will not be very used to interacting with others.

Children who have spent more time in nursery schools or daycare centers, play more socially. Social games are considered to be more mature than lonely ones because children take into consideration other children in their activities, and that tells us that the normal selfishness of a child is gradually diminishing. Nevertheless there are some lonely games that are more aimed at the cognitive development than the social one, in such a way that it contributes to the development of independence and cognitive maturity. We do not mean, by this, that one kind of game is better than the other one; we are simply trying to show the advantages of each of them.

It is also important to consider each child’s personality. There are kids who enjoy individual activities more than social ones, and we are not necessarily talking about children with insecurity, self-esteem or selfishness problems. There are some kids that are shyer than others and this does not imply a development disorder.

The cognitive game, as it was mentioned above, only reveals the mental development of children. This type of games evolves as the child evolves in his/her cognitive development. The kid evolves from a repetitive game that consists on simple muscular movements (rolling a ball). From there he moves to the constructive game (building a tower with blocks), later on he moves on to the symbolic game (playing to be the teacher, mother, doctor, etc) to finally end up with the formal game with rules (checkers, etc.)

Symbolic games are pretty important for development. The capacity to pretend is based on the capacity to use and remember symbols. This kind of game starts around the three years of age, comes to its peak at four or five and then moves towards games with rules at six or seven. Through imagination, children understand better other people’s point of view, develop skills to solve social problems and can express their creativity.

It is important to take into consideration the kind of environment that surrounds the kid, that is, if parents or people in charge of taking care of the children encourage them to play the kind of “pretending” games. It will be more difficult for children that spend long time in front of a TV set to use their creativity than other children who have the resources to help them use their creativity.

Children that count on the resources which can help them to express their creativity through games, either social or cognitive, will become adults with no difficulty to find their vocation, and better yet, that enjoy doing their job, while children that cannot play and show their creativity, will become adults with difficulties to work. They may be passive adults instead of active and propositive adults in their jobs or occupations.

That is why the title of this article, that intends to make us conscious of the importance of certain activities for children that adults do not seem to understand very clearly. And you, What kind of child were you? Did you play? Did you spend your whole time in front of the TV set? And how much do you enjoy your job today? Did you find your true vocation? Or have you gone through life just like that? … Think about it.