Flexibility Activities
Video games by their very nature demand cognitive flexibility. Your child gets the most out of the flexibility practice they get by using apps and games when you get involved. Talking about and playing video games with your kids not only gives them validation and support, it offers you opportunities to help them reflect on and make connections between the skills they use in the game and the skills they use in the real world. You can help them take that practice to the next level by working on one or more of these activities together.
Learning through trying and failing is a key component of video gaming and a necessary skill for all of your child’s academic pursuits. In real-world situations, children are often more reluctant to learn the directions and expectations of a task by making mistakes and trying out something new than they would be in playing a game. Learning how to cook a favorite meal, learning a musical instrument or taking a new route to school are all valuable opportunities to practice trial and error learning. Make sure you talk to your child about these efforts and experiences and the positive and negative aspects of the process.
Showing your child that you are not afraid of making mistakes and that you can laugh at yourself might allow them to laugh at their own errors. Show that you are able to learn from purposefully messing up. You might go the wrong way to an event or activity, mix up ingredients in a recipe, make a hole in the wall while you are trying to hang a picture, or make an error when trying to complete a crossword puzzle or Sudoku. Play a game like Social Chess together and be vocal about the times you make a move you wish you hadn’t, then explain what you might do to recover. Encourage your child to talk about how they can learn from making mistakes.
Encourage your child to use common household items in different and unusual ways. Ask your child to come up with ten ways to use a fork, book, pen, or piece of clothing and discuss how being flexible and thinking outside the box can help to solve problems. Flexible problem solving means utilizing materials on hand to complete a task. Talk to your child about ways to apply this approach in everyday life.
Gradually and steadily expose a child to new situations, starting with familiar areas in which they already feel somewhat comfortable. For example, help them get over separation anxiety by spending some time away from you with other close family members. Attempting a sleepover at a relative’s house might be a good first step in helping your child enjoy a sleepover at a friend’s house. You can also try introducing your child to group activities such as Scouts, a karate class, or a sports team. An MMORPG like Guild Wars 2 can be a good step toward trying something new and interacting with new people.
Focus Activities
You may wonder why your child can’t sit still long enough to read a chapter in a book but can play a video game all day long. Focus is the thinking skill practiced the most when kids are engaged in screen time, but none of that practice really counts until you get involved. Talking about and playing video games with your kids not only gives them validation and support, it offers you opportunities to help them reflect on and make connections between the skills they use in the game and the skills they use in the real world. You can help them take their focus practice to the next level by working on one or more of these activities together.
Task Initiation
Your child might respond well to competition or “limited time offers” as strategies to help them get started on tasks and projects. With a large digital clock visible, challenge your child to focus and work as hard as they can for a short period of time (10 to 15 minutes). Another task initiation strategy is to have your child write down the start and finish times for an assignment. Just as mindful of food intake can mean eating healthier foods and healthier portions, keeping track of how long something takes can increase your child’s awareness of the importance of getting started.
Have your child teach you how to start something they know how to do, such as a computer game, a puzzle, or installing an app on a smartphone. Ask for details and encourage them to explaining from the very beginning of the process, as if you are a small child who has never seen a puzzle or a mobile device before. Have them explain even the most basic steps, such as how to push a power button, how to move a mouse, or how to navigate to the app store.
Whenever possible, help your child find ways to make chores and homework more engaging. Help them hunt down an interesting book for a report or offer outdoor chores to a more active child. Using an app like HabitRPG, ChoreMonster, or SuperBetter can turn mundane daily activities into fun little quests. Making homework more interesting can be a daunting task, but ask your child’s teacher for suggestions or find ideas for using stimulating digital technologies. There are many Internet-based homework sites (like BrainPOP) and audiovisual supplements (books on tape, web-based research, science/history television shows) that can make schoolwork more enjoyable.
Big projects and bad messes can overwhelm anyone. Help your child learn how to take things step-by-step. If their bedroom looks as if a hurricane hit it, point them toward where to start (say, picking up all the clothes first or rescuing the homework before it gets anymore tattered). The next step might be to return all dishes to the kitchen or getting toys in their bins. Use your smartphone to help your child take some before and after pictures detailing each step of the job. These could be kept in an online album or printed and posted on the back of the door to be used as a visual guide to cleaning the room next time.
Sustained Attention
Psychologists call this the Premack Principle; people will usually perform a less desirable activity if it leads to a more desirable activity in the end. You employ the Premack Principle when you tell your child that they can only have dessert after she has eaten her dinner. Help your child employ this strategy on her own by arranging activities she enjoys following dull and boring chores. Talk about how finishing a mundane task quickly means watching her favorite television show, reading a book, or getting to play outside. Encourage her to think of new ways she might use this type of incentive to complete homework or chores efficiently. Using an app like HabitRPG, ChoreMonster, or SuperBetter can help.
Challenge your child to a race. Tell your child to see whether they can fully complete a portion of their homework before you finish putting away the groceries after shopping. Encourage naturally competitive children to come up with strategies for competing against themselves or others. Engage siblings, friends or other caregivers in these friendly contests.
Simon Says, Memory and card games like Go Fish challenge children to observe, remember and either repeat or use what they have seen during game play. If your child wins, ask them to tell you about strategies that helped them to be successful in the game. Reinforcing your child’s efforts in learning and playing the games can be a helpful and fun way to practice sustained attention.
Encourage activities that involve social interaction and service to others. Volunteer for activities that involve assisting others and that are often self-rewarding while engaging your child’s attention. Hands-on opportunities such as Habitat for Humanity, Scouting or environmental clean-up days are often very positive experiences for engaging, sustaining, and maintaining attention. Encourage your child to talk about the components of these activities that keep her involved and to use these as guides for the selection of later activities and jobs.
Building Persistence
Many children who find it hard to persist on tasks implicitly believe that failures are due to either a lack of ability or forces totally outside of their control. They believe they cannot succeed no matter how hard they try. It is extremely important to help these children to see how their efforts are paying off. Help them to make the vital connection that success is attributed to effective strategies and sustained effort. Talk frequently with your child about ways she can identify and own her behaviors that have led to progress and favorable outcomes. Positive psychology apps like SuperBetter and Everest and games like Thomas Was Alone and Ori and the Blind Forest can be good resources for improving outlooks.
If your child has difficulty facing large tasks, help them practice taking on smaller tasks that involve one or two steps. A child overwhelmed by a LEGOs project with 600 pieces will do far better starting with a Bionics set of 70 to 80 pieces. Have your child read books one chapter at a time (use a binder clip to cordon off the remainder), build a model one day and make a plan to paint it the next day, and tackle messy bedrooms by completing a list of individual tasks (picking up clothes, putting away books and papers, dusting). Discuss how most great accomplishments — the Sistine Chapel or earning an Olympic medal — require persistence and almost always involve overcoming some adversity.
Help your child experience the tangible results of sticking to a task by emphasizing rewards. Children who are trying to save money to buy a particular toy or game are likely to benefit from a bit of help from their parents so that they can get it in a shorter amount of time. Point out and discuss how their persistence in “sticking to it” inspired your contribution. An app like HabitRPG or ChoreMonster can help you set real-world rewards in a game-like environment that makes daily tasks more fun.
Help your child to develop self-verbalization skills that will assist her with metacognition. Ask questions such as “Can you think of another way of doing that?” or “How do you think others might have solved that problem?” Encourage her to ask these questions herself rather than depending upon external prompts. And encourage her to think about and discuss ways she has successfully completed difficult tasks in the past.
Organization Activities
Some video games are better suited at practicing organization than others (RPGs or role-playing games are ideal), but many apps are tailored specifically for that purpose. Either way, your child gets the most out of the organization practice they get from using apps and games when you get involved.
Talking about and playing video games with your kids not only gives them validation and support, it offers you opportunities to help them reflect on and make connections between the skills they use in the game and the skills they use in the real world. You can help them take that practice to the next level by working on one or more of these activities together.
Developing a hobby will most certainly encourage some organization practice. Some good examples are collecting game cards (like Pokémon) or sports cards, American Girl dolls, models, or rocks or shells. Suggest or support the use of “organizers” (a shelf, tackle box, or card sleeves) that will help to keep the collection organized.
Put away LEGOs or building toys in containers that are color- and size-coded. Organizing stuffed animals by size, type, and color is not a long-term strategy but will help children to think about relationships among items. Encourage children to develop some organizational schemes with you. Your role is to provide the materials and space necessary to engage in this type of organization and then to get them talking to you about their thinking.
Sit down together to complete a project. Visual instructions for a LEGO set or a piece of furniture can help children to see the steps of starting, organizing and completing a project. These models can help children construct their own “hard copy” for using illustrated directions or exercising their own visualization skills. Offer reminders of these tools and procedures when children have a multi-step project to do.
Your child’s rendition of a family story or account of a field trip to an amusement park can serve as practice in selecting, prioritizing and sequencing the most important details and topics. Ask questions to show how keeping the plot in order helps the audience to understand and enjoy the story. You could illustrate the consequences of disorder by retelling the same story or recounting one of your own with a mixed up sequence of events, emphasizing the irrelevant issues and glaring omissions. Have your child point out disorganization or lack of important information as you go. You could also try this with other shared observations, such as watching a television show, a movie, or dramatic incident at home or school. Encourage them to play narrative video games like Gone Home, Never Alone, or Gravity Ghost and discuss the origins of the story and how events unfolded.
Planning Activities
Should I make that jump? What will happen here? What do I need before I start this quest? What else can I do over there? These are the types of questions your child might ask themselves when playing a video game.
Your child gets the most out of the planning practice they get when they use apps and play video games when you get involved. Talking about and playing video games with your kids not only gives them validation and support, it offers you opportunities to help them reflect on and make connections between the skills they use in the game and the skills they use in the real world. You can help them take that practice to the next level by working on one or more of these activities together.
Talk about pros and cons of decisions big and small. Encourage your child to make a written list of the positive and negative effects of a choice. This can be done with a variety of everyday experiences such as choosing clothing to wear, picking out a game or movie to rent, or sequencing homework, chores, and play. Most importantly, review the results of your child’s choices with an eye on future planning.
Emphasize the importance of watching the entire dance before you focus on learning the sequence of the steps. Engage in other activities that involve seeing and considering the whole process, but learning the steps first. Examples would be completing a science fair project or putting together a piece of furniture. Discuss how understanding the parts and the whole help in planning. Play a game like Dance Central Spotlight together and be vocal about preparing for the upcoming moves in a dance routine.
Work with your child on a craft or hobby that requires planning, such as making jewelry, building models, gardening, or collecting stamps or coins. Gradually put them in charge of determining what is need to pursue your mutual hobby.
Use hands-on building tasks with blocks, LEGOs, bricks, or lumber to complete a paper-based design. Creative artwork with geometric forms also requires foresight, planning, breaking down the plan into steps and building a design. Many toys beyond simple blocks or LEGOs, such as Geomix, Hexabits, and Connex, require planning and visualization skills. Engage in both free play (with a particular design in mind) and tasks in which you use completely pre-designed models. Compare and contrast your approaches and planning decisions. A game like Minecraft is particularly well-suited to this kind of creative planning.
Self-Awareness Activities
Games and apps that place your child in social situations are especially good tools for practicing self-awareness, but practice with this thinking skill comes any time a child is challenged to reflect and self-assess. Your child gets the most out of this self-awareness practice when you get involved.
Talking about and playing video games with your kids not only gives them validation and support, it offers you opportunities to help them reflect on and make connections between the skills they use in the game and the skills they use in the real world. You can help them take that practice to the next level by working on one or more of these activities together.
Metacognition
As you work on tasks and projects around the house, look for opportunities to use statements such as, “This reminds me of the time when we tried to do this…” or “I need to think about what worked and didn’t work last time we did this” or “I want to learn from the mistakes I made last time, so let me think about a new way to try this.”
Encourage your child to use similar self-instructional and metacognitive strategies for problem solving. Prompt them to think about and discuss ways they have successfully completed difficult tasks in the past. Ask them questions like, “Can you think of another way of doing that?” or “How do you think others might have solved that problem?” The goal is for them to get into the habit of asking these questions independently.
Ask your child their likes and dislikes to help them see preferences as important components of self-awareness. If they have difficulties in this area, start with simple, direct questions such as, “What are your favorite foods, desserts, sports, TV shows, etc.” Gradually move on to more complex topics such as favorite seasons, school subjects, and friends. Follow up by asking for elaboration about why they prefer the things they does.
Develop checklists to help children determine how well they have completed a home-based chore or activity. Use a grading system and give praise for accurate self-evaluation. Have them rate themselves for the same task while you are also rating them and then compare and contrast scores. Describe your methods of evaluation and ask them to do the same. An app like HabitRPG or ChoreMonster can help.
Social Thinking
Help your child to set up a play date with a friend by talking about the guest’s interests, anticipating any needs or preparing some activities that they might both enjoy. You may also find ways to have your child help you in getting ready for dinner guests or visiting relatives with similar considerations in mind.
Make use of occasional opportunities for you and your child to sit back and observe other children in small groups. On a bench at the playground, the beach or the mall, take turns reporting on social interactions you can watch live. Make guesses about what might be going on and then point out any physical actions, facial expressions, behaviors or tones of voice that give clues to support or disprove your imagined story.
Role-playing or rehearsing lines can be a big help in getting ready to meet new people or enter a new setting. Take turns introducing yourself to each other and asking one or two appropriate questions. As your child becomes more confident with these skills, simply offer a prompt prior to entering a new situation. Be generous with praise for efforts and successes.
Provide a checklist for your child and agree to work on one or two skills at a time. Some basic starting points would include the following: face the person you are talking or listening to and make eye contact; allow an arm’s length of personal space; display appropriate facial expressions; match your activity level to the situation or group; and pay attention to communication such as whether or not you are listening, interrupting, talking too much or too loudly and staying on topics of shared interest. Use an MMORPG like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2 to ease your child into social skills and give them practice interacting with others in a less stressful environment.
Discuss your own experience while involved in an activity with your child, ask about her thoughts or feelings and compare impressions. Use everyday circumstances to motivate your child to consider how other kids might be feeling in situations such as before a recital, staying home alone for the first time, or losing a game. Find similar chances to discuss the feelings of others while watching sports on television, learning about an accident or seeing a classmate receive an award for an accomplishment. Games like Ori and the Blind Forest, Gone Home, Thomas Was Alone, and Whispering Willows are good tools for practicing empathy.
Looking at how people from other countries communicate, do business, or celebrate traditional events can not only build understanding and empathy for others, it can also inspire your child to pay closer attention to social customs and expectations within your own family and community. Depending upon your child’s interests, you could use books and websites, a shopping trip to another neighborhood, or you could pretend to be tourists at a local flea market or festival.
Self-Control Activities
Whether your child realizes it or not, they practice self-control in video games when they manage their frustration and persist at a task. When they play a multiplayer game with others, this self-control practice becomes about curbing language and managing emotions. Your child gets the most out of this self-control practice when you get involved.
Talking about and playing video games with your kids not only gives them validation and support, it offers you opportunities to help them reflect on and make connections between the skills they use in the game and the skills they use in the real world. You can help them take that practice to the next level by working on one or more of these activities together.
Response Inhibition
You can provide some easily learned strategies that will train your child to practice self-restraint. Help your child to identify situations that require self-control and encourage him to think of actions that will make it easier to remember and practice. The following are some ideas for practicing response inhibition with your child:
- put your hands in front of your mouth to prevent interrupting
- sit on your hands when it is not time to get up and move around yet
- keep your hands in your pockets while in line to prevent pushing or shoving others
Pairing an impulsive child with a classroom buddy who is able to display restraint often makes the impulsive child more aware of his actions. In home and social settings, impulsive children often feed off of each other, and combinations of two or more impulsive children can quickly lead to out of control behavior. Encourage your child to carefully observe his peer buddy and other positive models of self-restraint. Use real-life observations of self-control (or lack thereof) as ways to talk more about the subject.
Use videos to help your child observe examples of both his impulsive behavior and times of self-restraint. The opportunity to step back and look at his actions might help him to understand the inappropriateness and ineffectiveness of his behavior. This may then lead to the development of new strategies for similar situations in the future. You could also have your child “act” in a video where he shows self-control and then view and discuss it together. Potential scenarios for this type of acting include dealing with a sibling who is teasing him, waiting his turn to play a game, or losing in a game.
This is easy at home. At school, movement will need to come between classes, at recess or by running errands for the teacher. Encourage more “regulated fidgeting” by providing a squeeze ball, a small polished stone, or something with which to “fiddle”. Also encourage your child to be able to identify the need to move and to find strategies appropriate to the situation. One very underused strategy that can be practiced at home and then used in many settings is stretching, both in standing and in sitting positions.
Self-Regulation of Affect
Build their tolerance for frustration by slowly increasing the difficulty level in games and activities. While playing basketball, take turns shooting 10 layups per person and then move back 2 feet and try it again. Let them know that even talented people experience failure. Tell them that even the best baseball players get a hit only 3 out of every 10 times at bat. Reveal the fact that you didn’t get A’s on every test in school, and their teacher probably didn’t either. Help them to identify areas in their lives where they can consistently try their best but still be successful only a limited percentage of the time. Some examples of areas where perfection is not always possible: sports, musical performance, and video games.
Help children to narrate explanations of why they or somebody else might behave a certain way. Children who talk about their feelings (i.e., “I’m angry because my brothers always tease me when I lose”) are more likely to be able to regulate their emotional expressions. You can set an example for your child by using brief narratives of your own; for instance, describing how upset you were when your boss or coworker gave you a large project to do just as you were leaving to go home. You could also role-play some possible reactions to hypothetical situations. Possible scenarios include getting blamed for something you didn’t do, being left out by your friends, or having to do someone else’s chore because that person forgot to do it.
It is often very helpful to talk about emotional regulation in other terms, such as feeling temperatures, adjusting the volume on feelings, or keeping your cool. Redefine ways to help children think about strategies for emotional regulation. For instance, “shedding a layer” (letting go of a particular concern or emotion), or “turning down the volume” (consciously choosing to reduce the importance of a situation) can lead to feeling more comfortable. It can also help to focus on situations which you have some control over. For example, you can’t change the weather but you can choose to wear a warmer coat. You can’t silence the neighbor’s supersonic leaf blower but you can wear earplugs or turn on a fan to reduce the disruptive effects of the noise on your power of concentration. Your child can also lessen feelings of intensity by deliberately focusing on areas of personal interest as a distraction, such as listening to her favorite music CD, making a wishlist of toys, books or games, or engaging in an enjoyable activity with a friend.
When your child makes a mistake, display understanding and briefly articulate why it is better for you to forgive than to remain angry and describe ways she could correct what she has done and do better next time. Keep in mind that your goal is to teach alternatives to angry outbursts and emotional dysregulation. Provide a “script” the child might use to forgive a sibling or friend for a mistake. Help her to identify chances to practice forgiveness and praise efforts at doing so.
Time Management Activities
Remember those timed levels in the Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog games? You had to prioritize and be quick enough to beat the clock but careful enough not to land on spikes or throw yourself off a cliff. This is valuable practice with the time management thinking skill, and your kid gets the most out of it when you get involved in their digital playtime.
Talking about and playing video games with your kids not only gives them validation and support, it offers you opportunities to help them reflect on and make connections between the skills they use in the game and the skills they use in the real world. You can help them take that practice to the next level by working on one or more of these activities together.
Talk about time management strategies as you use them to accomplish tasks. This “verbal modeling” also includes some components of planning such as stating out loud, “First I’ll get the water boiling for the pasta, and then I’ll start on the salad.” After I put the pasta into the water, I’ll finish the salad, heat up the sauce, then drain the pasta and we can eat dinner.” Explain why you go to the bank and the grocery store on the same trip. Encourage your child to verbalize strategies for managing workloads, chores, or homework more efficiently.
Visual schedules can help with time management. Have a large, monthly family calendar to write on, and record any appointments and events in the order in which they will occur on a given day. Post schedules, particularly for weekends when children have many activities. Casually mention how you will attempt to complete your tasks efficiently, for example, grocery shopping while a child is at a karate lesson. Use different colored markers to prioritize and make a point to emphasize how you can use your time efficiently between dropping kids off for different activities and taking care of household tasks. Encourage your child to use a similar process of prioritizing on completing homework, playing with friends, taking care of chores and attending extracurricular activities.
Directly instruct children in test-taking strategies like prioritization. Teach them to answer all of the questions they know the answers to before spending time on more difficult questions. Teach them how to construct very brief outlines in response to essay questions and how to maximize the amount of time they will have to complete a test by sitting towards the front of the class, having all materials ready and available upon receiving the test, and having a watch that can be used as a timer so that they are aware of how much time they have left to complete the test.
Randomly ask them, “What time is it?” or “How long has it been since we left the house?” Be certain that you can give them the exact amount of time that has elapsed. By doing this, you will make your child more cognizant of time and the passage of time as it related to his own life. Help them get better at estimating by using technologies that help with time management. In addition to alarm clocks, digital watches and stock apps on smartphones, there are products and apps designed specifically for enhancing time awareness and time management. These include the “talking timer” from Tel-Time and apps like Week Calendar, Timer+, and Boximize.
Working Memory Activities
Did you know that your child practices the same major thinking skill when they read as they do when they are playing a video game? The working memory thinking skill is put to the test when they are making connections in a text between what came before and what comes after, in very much the same way that they explore worlds and complete quests in a game. They get even more out of this working memory practice when you get involved in their digital playtime.
Talking about and playing video games with your kids not only gives them validation and support, it offers you opportunities to help them reflect on and make connections between the skills they use in the game and the skills they use in the real world. You can help them take that practice to the next level by working on one or more of these activities together.
Your child’s account of what happened at a soccer game or during a visit to a friend’s house is good practice for recounting experiences in a concise and orderly fashion. Ask questions and give feedback that encourage the child to keep on topic, keep thoughts connected and not repeat herself. These are all components of working memory. When you tell a story or describe an experience, you could either point out that you are reporting in an orderly manner, or mix it up and have the child notice where and when you are not reporting in an orderly manner. Use an app like Directr, Prezi, or Disney’s Story to help them practice putting together cogent and well-ordered narratives.
Help children to preview the steps needed to complete basic tasks such as getting ready for bed. Encourage them to predict what will happen if they miss a step. Then help them connect what they need to do with their previous knowledge of accomplishing these tasks. Ask them to paraphrase and summarize directions you have just given. Each of these techniques reflect some of the strategies that are often used with diverse learners to teach them how to use their previous memories and establish thinking skills to guide and direct their behaviors. If you are thinking about these strategies in regard to improving memory, you might also want to talk to your child’s classroom or resource teacher for more ideas about ways to try them.
Phone numbers are often chunked into three and then four digits, 515-2006, making them easier to remember. Directions for tasks and routines can also be combined into short and easy to remember sentences. Repeating the words “backpack, lunch, homework” chunks the action of leaving for school into one list instead of three separate items. Encourage your child to use chunking whenever possible from “hat, mittens, and scarf” to science facts and math equations.
Knowing how many things you need to get or do can help you to remember what they are. For instance, if you need to remember five items for a pizza recipe, such as flour, tomato sauce, cheese, olive oil and peppers, it could help to remember the number 5 If your child remembers that she has homework in three subjects, this might facilitate easier recall of the classes for which she has homework. You can practice this clustering strategy by asking how many things need to be remembered and encouraging your child to group information into meaningful categories.
For instance, if you need to remember five items for a pizza recipe, such as flour, tomato sauce, cheese, olive oil and peppers, it could help to remember the number 5 If your child remembers that she has homework in three subjects, this might facilitate easier recall of the classes for which she has homework. You can practice this clustering strategy by asking how many things need to be remembered and encouraging your child to group information into meaningful categories.