Games are a great way to bring families, friends, and students together. They are also excellent in helping children develop valuable life skills in a fun and accessible way. Games enable children to draw on and develop skills that are fundamental to growing up and living a fruitful life.
Board games, interactive games, and video games all have similar benefits that are invaluable. While there is a need to be cautious of time spent playing games, it could be argued a balance is necessary, due to the many benefits they reap.
Here are some of the most valuable skills that are developed through playing games.
Patience is a quality that is not very common and can be quite significant when playing games. Regardless of the type of game, most of them require a level of patience to participate and succeed, which is a skill that is a very sought-after quality in the personal and professional world. Whether it is working your way up the ranks in a video game, or carefully making decisions to fulfill a long-term strategy, patience is key.
Concentration and attention are skills that are very hard to teach, especially with social media being so popular and reports that suggest we have a much shorter attention span. To participate, score well and succeed, most games require a player to pay full attention to what they are doing.
Most games include challenges, obstacles, or puzzles that need solving to participate, move forward and compete. This enables children to draw on approaches they already know, but also think outside the box to solve the problems at hand. It also teaches children to seek outside sources of information, whether that is researching how to complete a task or using a tool to unscramble words and extend their vocabulary. Once a problem has been solved and the players can move forward, it provides a positive reward for children to learn and continue to problem solve in the future.
The majority of games require more than one player, whether this is a video game, a game of chess, or Monopoly at family game night. This is because they require players to cooperate with each other to solve the challenges and succeed, or to interact with each other in a friendly competition against one another.
In team games, there is always a dedicated team leader who runs the team, encourages good morale, comes up with the best strategies and approaches to use (and learns from the ones that don’t work), manages the other players, facilitates communication, keeps everyone focused and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of everyone on the team to be able to win the game.
Some of the most popular games played by families and children provide a great way to learn new skills that are easily transferable into real life. Try a range of new games each week to extend your children’s skills even further.