Benefits of Board Games for Children and their Families
By Lauren Ehrenfeld, BPsych (Hons)
January 2022
By Lauren Ehrenfeld, BPsych (Hons)
January 2022
Countless research articles exist highlighting the benefits of family social interaction on the cognitive, social and emotional development of children.1, 2 As children develop, it is important to continue to prioritise ‘family time’ as a way to foster strong parent-child relationships, and to strengthen the family unit. One timeless way to spend time together, is through board games. There are a host of benefits to board and tabletop games for a child’s development, some of which are listed below:
1.Board games help develop critical social skills
In addition to pulling children away from screens, board games engage a range of social skills including cooperation, turn-taking and other prosocial behaviours. Research in pre-school children has found that both competitive and cooperative board and card games increased prosocial behaviours such as sharing, and complimenting or helping others 3.
2.Board games can improve cognitive function
Game can help develop number knowledge, arithmetic skills, and development of abstract numerical concepts4. As well, games requiring spontaneous speech, reading or writing can be used as a tool for continuing language development. Board games also require using frontal brain functions such as planning, problem solving, decision making, and inhibiting responses.
3.Board games allow for time away from screens
Most parents are aware of the potential negative effects of excessive screen time on their child’s development. Structuring family activities away from screens can help improve a child’s mood, sleep quality, and help foster feelings of connectedness among family members5.
4.Board games may improve symptoms associated with ADHD
Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) often have differences in functioning in the front part of the brain, which plays a role in regulating attention, behaviour and emotion. There is some evidence to support the use of abstract strategy games such as Chess or Go in improving attention in children with ADHD by activating this frontal brain region6.
In addition to pulling children away from screens, board games engage a range of social skills including cooperation, turn-taking and other prosocial behaviours. Research in pre-school children has found that both competitive and cooperative board and card games increased prosocial behaviours such as sharing, and complimenting or helping others 3.
2.Board games can improve cognitive function
Game can help develop number knowledge, arithmetic skills, and development of abstract numerical concepts4. As well, games requiring spontaneous speech, reading or writing can be used as a tool for continuing language development. Board games also require using frontal brain functions such as planning, problem solving, decision making, and inhibiting responses.
3.Board games allow for time away from screens
Most parents are aware of the potential negative effects of excessive screen time on their child’s development. Structuring family activities away from screens can help improve a child’s mood, sleep quality, and help foster feelings of connectedness among family members5.
4.Board games may improve symptoms associated with ADHD
Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) often have differences in functioning in the front part of the brain, which plays a role in regulating attention, behaviour and emotion. There is some evidence to support the use of abstract strategy games such as Chess or Go in improving attention in children with ADHD by activating this frontal brain region6.
An article about the positive effects associated with board games would be remiss without several suggestions. We have come a long way since the days of Monopoly and Scrabble and now thousands of wonderful new games are being released every year. Below are some family weight games to engage your children socially and cognitively, and to spend meaningful time together as a family. Remember that when engaging children, especially those who have difficulties with attention, it is best to engage them in their interests. So, if your child loves racing cars, then try find a game that involves racing along a track. Keep in mind gameplay length and realistic age-based expectations of your child’s attention span when selecting games.
Click Clack Lumberjack
Click Clack Lumberjack is almost like Jenga in reverse. In this game, you use a small axe to tap on the side of a stack of tree trunk discs, in order to knock off the bark on the side. Each piece of bark you knock off will give you +1 point, but each tree trunk disc knocked off will be -5 points. The game continues until all the bark has fallen off, or the entire tree is knocked down. This is a nice way to help your children develop their fine motor skills and will allow them to practice some basic arithmetic in calculating their final score.
|
Rhino Hero: Super Battle
Rhino Hero is another game that will allow your children to develop their dexterity skills, here through stacking cards. Rhino Hero: Super Battle has you stacking wall and ceiling cards into a large building and rolling a dice to move your animal up the building. The large scale of the towers requires you to move around the table to stack pieces, which promotes interaction and conversation during the game.
|
Sushi Go
Sushi Go is a game involving collecting sets of adorably illustrated sushi. Every round, each player picks a card from their hand to play, then passes their hand to the player to their left. Cards have different multipliers for points, and some need to be collected in sets of two or three. This game involves planning, and remembering what cards you have seen to help decide which sushi you should pick. Children will also learn basic multiplication and pattern recognition, as well as delayed gratification as they wait for the right sushi to come up!
|
Wits and Wagers
This is a trivia game where all of the answers are numerical. But, after everyone has written their answers, the numbers are placed in ascending order and each player can guess who they think is closest to the correct answer. This is great for families as children are always able to guess a number even if they do not know the answer, and can score points just by guessing who is closest. You can also have your family come up with questions of their own.
|
Telestration
Telestrations is like Chinese whispers with drawings. In this game, each person will get something to draw. Once they have drawn it, everyone passes their drawing to the player to their right. The person looks at the drawing, then flips to the next page and writes what they think was drawn. This is then passed to the player to the player to their right who flips the page and draws what the previous player wrote. This continues for several rounds. At the end of the game, each person will have a collection of drawings and written descriptions to show to the table. It is wonderful for a wide variety of ages and can create funny, memorably family moments when seeing how far from the original word the drawings became.
|
Anomia Kids
In this game, each player takes the top card from the deck and puts it in front of them. Whenever the coloured symbol on two cards match, these two players ‘face-off’ and race to name a word that begins with the same sound as the black image on the other player’s card. Whoever finishes their word first, wins the card. If removing this player’s card reveals another match with the card in their stack below, then another face-off occurs. The player with the most cards after the deck is finished wins. The use of pictures means it is accessible to pre-readers while still allowing them to develop language skills. It can also work with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds as there is no writing on the cards.
|
The Mind
In this game, you all collectively play as one ‘Mind’, trying to numbered play cards from your hand in order from lowest to highest without speaking. It sounds simple, but it is all about the language and communication in the absence of words. The sly looks you give each other as if to say “no, I’m definitely not next”.
|
Timeline
In this game, you are trying to get rid of all your cards by placing them into an ever-growing timeline of events, inventions, and discoveries. If you place your card incorrectly, you have to draw another card. This is a nice way to teach your older children about history, or challenge parents with their knowledge of pop-culture. Some reading is required.
|
Its time to get playing!
References
- Dodd, D. C., Zabriskie, R. B., Widmer, M. A., & Eggett, D. (2009). Contributions of family leisure to family functioning among families that include children with developmental disabilities. Journal of Leisure Research, 41(2), 261-286.
- Hornberger, L. B., Zabriskie, R. B., & Freeman, P. (2010). Contributions of family leisure to family functioning among single-parent families. Leisure Sciences, 32(2), 143-161.
- Eriksson, M., Kenward, B., Poom, L., & Stenberg, G. (2021). The behavioral effects of cooperative and competitive board games in preschoolers. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 62(3), 355-364.
- Elofsson, J., Gustafson, S., Samuelsson, J., & Träff, U. (2016). Playing number board games supports 5-year-old children’s early mathematical development. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 43, 134-147.
- Kim, S. H., Han, D. H., Lee, Y. S., Kim, B. N., Cheong, J. H., & Han, S. H. (2014). Baduk (the game of Go) improved cognitive function and brain activity in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Psychiatry Investigation, 11(2), 143.
- Domingues‐Montanari, S. (2017). Clinical and psychological effects of excessive screen time on children. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 53(4), 333-338.