The benefits of the game are indisputable, and since they are babies you have to strengthen and respond to the playful side. There are many ways to play, but here we will highlight ten benefits of playing with others, some shared with the game alone, others specific to the group.
By playing, babies and children learn what can or cannot be done with the objects around them, and how it can be done, they experience and discover. Not only do they serve what is literally understood as "toys": any object around it can be (we will be careful, of course, that dangerous objects are not).
When they play with other children, unlike if they play alone, they discover that there are rules of chance or probability or rules of conduct, which must be followed if you want others to play with them.
The game stimulates physical development, especially at school age, when movements come into action more clearly. There are studies of the game in the school and in the youth that show the relationship between active or inactive play (sitting for example) and the body mass index. It is proven that sedentary activities, such as watching television, video or videogames, promote obesity. Physical exercise is better than diets against childhood obesity.
The game helps, without realizing and in an entertaining way, to acquire important habits for intellectual development such as perseverance, so important for all learning.
The baby produces pleasure and satisfaction check that you can manipulate your environment and get a response from, for example, parents, when they throw an object on the ground and it is returned. As parents also produce satisfaction, it becomes a "mutual pleasure" that is what gives meaning and makes that act a true "game." That shared pleasure gives the game meaning and will make the baby have energy and enthusiasm to seek new interactions and repeat them.
Free play, without rules, is usually solo and stimulates fantasy, but it can also be done in company. In free play, nobody knows where it is going to stop, they emulate characters, they change roles, they move forward and step back in their “arguments”… There are also free games like dancing in which there is no competitiveness and the only objective is to get distracted.
Through the game children learn to identify and become familiar with their fancy desires: of battles, of greatness, of wanting to be a superhero or a king ... Thus, in an identification similar to what happens when they listen to or read stories, they look for fulfill their dreams, devoid of realism and thus "compensate" for their feelings of being subject to adult control.
In structured games you "compete" and children They check their own worth and effort. Although we always remember that competitiveness must be healthy, for example, sport should not be competitively oriented towards the "elite athlete" or other unsportsmanlike practices.
The game helps to compensate for two worlds of the child that will coexist for a long time: its internal jurisdiction (its authentic potentials but mixed with fantasy) and the external, the real thing that life imposes on it.
The "preamble" of the game itself, the preparations, those previous minutes to organize, are a game of "democracy", in which the rules, the roles are established ... Many times those moments are more fruitful in terms of sociability or linguistic development That game itself. The opinions of others are valued, put in place, decisions are made, conflicts are resolved, there is cooperation ...
The benefits of playing with others are obvious in an environment of sympathy, respect and cooperation, avoiding the concept of winners and losers. In this way, playing you learn to harmonize and enjoy in society, in your small groups of friends and family. In short, children continue to civilize with the game.
