How can play help our children’s behaviour?

This is the most helpful thing I’ve learned about parenting…

It comes from the book Good Inside by Dr Becky Kennedy, and it’s called “connection capital”. The ideas is that some things we do with our children increase connection. Other things decrease connection.

The more connection we have in the bank – the better our children feel and the better their behaviour is likely to be.

The problem is – a lot of the things we have to do as parents, decrease connection. Things like turning off the TV when they want one more episode or getting them to wash their hair or clean their teeth etc.

So, to offset this, we need to build up enough connection with our children during calmer times.

The absolute best thing we can do to build connection is “no phone play” – putting our phone in a drawer or another room and playing undistracted with our children. Even if our phone is in our pocket, it’s still a big distraction, because we will be thinking about replying to a message or all the other things we have to get done as busy parents.

I try and do this for at least 20 minutes a day and as early as possible. The reason for doing it early is you then reap the benefits for rest of the day.

It’s not some miracle solution that means everything is then easy, but it’s the one thing I’ve found that makes the biggest difference.