Communicating through Play

Holiday time is especially stressful with so much going on, high expectations and time is short. This is a great time of year to devote a little time to focus on the moment, play with your child and bring down the stress level. This article gives you some guidance and hints in how to play with your child that will build a stronger relationship.


“Communicating through Play”
by Linda M. Manning, RN, LPC-S, RPT-S
Registered Nurse
Licensed Professional Counselor-Supervisor
Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor


Play is a natural way for children to express what they think and feel. Children do not have to be taught how to play. It is an important part of their world. Play helps them learn about the world, themselves and others. It helps them practice new skills and improve their coordination. Child’s play is not goal driven. The outcome is not as important as the actual process of play for young children. Play goes hand in hand with growth and development and learning. In fact, non-goal driven, child’s play is essential to normal development.
In general, when parents engage in play with their children, they tend to teach, ask questions and lead the play activity. Adults usually have an end result in mind when playing. The parent wants to teach the child what the animals say, question to elicit what the child knows to meet the needs of the parent. Instructing is an important part of parenting yet we need to stop the teaching sometimes when playing in order to build a close relationship and have fun with our children.
Through normal growth and development children will begin to separate psychologically from the parent. We begin as dependent on everything from our parent and adults around us and gradually learn to be more self-sufficient and care for ourselves independently. But relationships are always important in happy, normal development. Inevitably, problems crop up in the parent-child relationship because the need to separate creates power struggles, misunderstandings and hurt feelings. How can play help with this all important relationship between the parent and the child?
Begin with understanding that play is an essential part of the child’s world and is enormously important in their expression of feelings and view of the world. The play I am referring to is not the electronic toy world or the video game universe. Play with ordinary toys and objects that can be manipulated by the child and his or her imagination are what children need to be expressive and creative in their play activities. The human child is born with the ability to develop all human emotions and potential. Keep in mind that children will express all kinds of emotions through play. Play is symbolic of what the child feels.
As often as you can, set aside a 30-minute play period for you and your child that will NOT be interrupted. Children need to know that they are important to you and can have your undivided attention. The following skills when practiced regularly will go a long way in helping you develop and maintain a healthy, close relationship with your child. It will also help your child develop self-control and self-regulation of feelings and become a more cooperative and happy child in general.
In the last newsletter article, I talked about how to show your child that you are listening by reflecting back to the child what he has said or is doing. This listening skill is very valuable while playing with your child. Instead of asking questions or teaching, describe what you see your child doing and repeat back what they say to you. Children under 7 years of age especially love this because they know you are getting what they are expressing and it empowers their sense of themselves. Allow your child to choose what toys he / she want to play with. Do not direct the play. You follow, let your child lead. Allowing your child to lead gives you a great opportunity to reinforce their ability to make decisions. “You decided to play with ….” is a great statement for a child to hear. You are validating her ability to make decisions and this goes along with growth and development. “You decided to feed the baby” is a much better statement than “Is the baby hungry?” or “What a good girl you are!”. These comments are subjective for the parent and not helpful to the child/parent relationship. If you consistently say “What a good girl (boy) you are!” the child learns to please YOU rather than learns about their own abilities. “You know how to take care of that baby” is a statement that recognizes and communicates your confidence in the child’s ability. The child will experience your praise through your tone of voice and acknowledgement of what he knows.
“You decided to color with those colors” will usually elicit the names of the colors from the child without asking “What color is that?” and it gives the child credit for making the decision. It opens communication because the child will usually feel comfortable telling you more. Asking “what color” will only get you the name of the color. Here’s how an exchange could go:
“You decided to color with that color.” (parent affirms the child’s ability to decide)
“Yea, that’s blue” (child – knows the name of the color and likes to show you)
“Oh, you know that name of that color.” (parent acknowledges the child’s knowledge)
“Yes, it’s my favorite color.” (child gives more information about himself)
“You really like that one.” (parent acknowledges and accepts child’s preferences)
“The water is blue and so is the sky.” (child feels comfortable and wants you to know what he knows)
“You know what things to color blue.” (parent gives child credit for knowing what he knows – young children especially do not usually hear comments like this)
“Uh-Huh. Sometimes I color flowers blue and sometimes I color
other things blue.” (child gives more information and feels comfortable expressing own likes and dislikes)
“You use blue for lots of things.” (parent is accepting – this is not a teaching moment – this is relationship building – you can teach lots of times)
In this exchange the parent is showing that she is listening, she gives credit to the child for knowing the name of the color and what to color with it AND recognizes the child’s likes. This exchange helps this parent and child feel closer.
If you only say to your child “What a pretty picture” you are only giving them YOUR subjective judgment. The only information children gather from this is that you only want pictures that you like so they will only try to please you. Not a bad thing to please their parent but it does limit your relationship if you child feels you are only accepting of certain things and you only love them if they can please you. The play activity becomes about the parent rather than the child. Use this play activity to learn about your child. Remember how you feel when someone really listens and accepts you. You feel cared about and connected that someone understands you.
There are a lot of opportunities in the daily activities with your child to teach them and they go to school where teaching is the focus. Take time to play with your child and build a close relationship where you communicate to your child that he or she is unique and valuable with abilities that you admire. Remember set aside a time you will not be interrupted; show you are paying attention by describing what the child is doing and restating what they say; allow the child to lead the play; do not teach or ask questions; acknowledge the child’s decisions and what he knows in your reflective comments. These skills will go a long way to build a communication style with your child that will nurture your relationship for life.
In the next article, I will discuss limit setting. Accepting your child, allowing him to lead in the play, and showing you are listening do not mean that you let your child get away with any behavior they feel like. Feelings are accepted because all humans have a range of emotions but behaviors are a different story and parents must impose limits and boundaries for children to grow up healthy.