The foundations of mental health in adult life are built in childhood. The role of mothers and fathers is essential in learning a healthy management of emotional skills. For this task, some games and toys become our greatest allies.
As I wrote in another article, when talking about the emotional development of children, it must always be taken into account that
Emotional development in childhood
Children learn to manage their emotions by experiencing them. Our job is to support them and offer them different tools to learn to manage their emotions in a healthy way.
In addition, we must accompany them in their learning without judging their emotions and without using elements of repression such as rewards, punishments or various blackmails.
We have to keep this idea very present. To raise our children with respect and for them to develop a healthy mental health We cannot impose on them, for our convenience, an arbitrary management of their emotions. Nor can we show ourselves as irrational adults, incapable of coherently assuming and managing our own emotions or theirs. We are your main example.
Yeah This emotional learning is done as a family, in an environment of support, tenderness and understanding, in which parents offer their children, without forcing them, emotional skills they need, the little ones will become children and adults with healthy emotional development.
Thus They will learn to correctly manage all their emotions, sOpen up the reason why you feel them, you will understand them and seek a solution to your emotional problems, when you suffer them.
Games and toys to experience emotions
To help the healthy emotional development of our children, some games and toys, They can serve as a basis for emotional experimentation. Let’s see some of them:
1. Board games
There are many types of board games, from for younger children, to teenagers and adults. Learning these games is very important.
- With them, our children, in addition to facing their frustration, They will learn, among other things, to take turns, to plan, to put yourself in the place of the other players, to accept their mistakes and to be patient.
2. Outdoor games
Natural environments bring immense happiness to children. In them they feel stronger, freer and braver.
- Of course, taking care that they don’t get hurt, if we let them get dirty, climb, jump and play all the games that are invented, our children will feel joy, they will challenge themselves and they will learn to trust their judgment and overcome their mistakes.
3. Group games
Playing in a group is a great social and emotional learning.
- If adults accompany children so that there are no abuses of power, our children will learn to trust others, to make decisions for the good of the group, to integrate, to empathize, to dialogue, to negotiate and much more.
4. Building games and puzzles
These types of games are very interesting because They confront the child with their own emotions. When they start the game they start from scratch, they must do the construction themselves and, for this, in addition to planning and patience, they need to trust themselves.
- In addition to boost self-esteem and confidence constructions and puzzles help develop decision-making power of the kids.
5. Handmade gifts
Thinking and creating some kind of craft can be a great way to strengthen emotional ties with your friends and family.
- Faced with consumerism and the usual advertising bombardment of these dates, we can help the little ones to Appreciate the value of work and things made by hand.