Bringing back Family Game Nights

From a young age I learned how to play games with my family – these provided hours of relaxation and fun.

My parents figured out a great recipe for creating deeper relationships, lasting memories as well as smart and constructive ways to keep my siblings and I away from phones and gadget addiction. We play games while on long distance travel, round the table at home, on vacation or while waiting for meals in a restaurant. Best of all, is when we have a party. We get everyone to play inclusive games be it grandparents, uncles, parents and children all together. It’s always great bonding time.

My sister and I –now 18 and 22 respectively, feel we have benefited from being initiated at a young age to board games.In fact, we are still learning life skills through gaming with the family. My younger brother-now 7 started playing with us when he was a toddler. We include him in all games although we are careful to modify the level of difficulty to suit his developmental and skill level.

The games require very little equipment and organisation, and have positive developmental effects.

For instance, keeping scores helped us improve our addition and subtraction skills. We also learnt how to be a gracious loser – actually understanding that there is a winner and a loser (not the delusional everyone is a winner” motto that some kids are fed).More importantly we learnt how to work as team, take turns, read and follow instructions and enjoy our time together not just as a family, but as a team. Overall, I believe the games helped us access and develop different types of intelligence from when we were kids.

We may not play as often or as much as we would want to, but when we do, memories of ancient and recent gaming sessions surface and it’s as much a time to pause and enjoy the moment, to remember the past with a smile and hope we can play again sooner than later.

For fun ideas of games to play with your family, check out our MumsVillage Playtime Pinterest board.