Posts in category: Psychology

Most days after school, if it’s dry enough, we stay and let the children play for a bit before heading home.

They play in the school yard which has a brilliant wooden fort and little obstacle course which is fantastic for them to burn off some steam after a day at school. The outdoor space and facilities are great at our school, and there is quite an emphasis on outdoor play and learning there that I really love.  The children are encouraged to get out and get stuck in and often come home muddy and dishevelled.

The school is really on to something with this I think, because there are all sorts of benefits to outdoor play in terms of our children’s learning and development.

Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget once said “Play is the work of childhood” and that is a sentiment that I really love.

Mr Rogers actually took this idea a bit further when he said, “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning.”

The thing is, children aren’t built to sit still and focus on learning.  Apparently up until they’re at least 9 years old children learn best when their whole self is involved in the process.  So sitting at a table and listening to a teacher talk isn’t going to help them learn as much as actively getting involved in something.

Young children in particular learn best through play.

When they’re playing they’re learning how to solve problems and they’re being creative and experimenting in all sorts of ways.  Play does so much to support our children’s cognitive development.  It’s through play that they learn skills like understanding and communication, as well as things like risk assessment and cause and effect.

What seems to be really important though is that the play needs to be unstructured.

Children don’t learn in the same way if adults are directing their play.  They need to be left to explore and play the way they want to play to really get the benefits.

This is one of the things I love about the play equipment at our school – it’s not obvious what each piece should be used for.

There are quite a few wooden structures that can be a fort, a stage, a family home, or whatever else the children can come up.  There are also shapes and tracks and games painted on the ground too which are brilliant for creative play and learning.

ESP play produce all sorts of play equipment and playground markings like the ones our school has, and have spent a lot of time researching the benefits of them.  If you pop over to ESP play’s website you can see their findings into the effects that outdoor creative play can have.  They have playground equipment for all ages from pieces suitable for early years play all the way up to secondary school.

They recognise findings from various studies that show that children need this kind of play environment where they aren’t restricted in the way they play.

So the children are free to come up with their own ideas and use the equipment creatively.  When children have this freedom to make up their own games, either by themselves or with other children, they learn so much.

They learn to figure things out on their own, to communicate better and to negotiate.  These types of skills are known as executive function skills and they’re so important for our children’s development.

Sergio Pellis, a researcher at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, explains that the best way for children to learn is through free-play.  He says:

“No coaches, no umpires, no rule books…Whether it’s rough-and-tumble play or two kids deciding to build a sand castle together, the kids themselves have to negotiate, well, what are we going to do in this game? What are the rules we are going to follow?”

When children play in this way new pathways and circuits are built in the prefrontal cortex that help them navigate these different social situations.  So playing actually creates changes in our children’s brains, wiring up its executive control centre, to set them up to be able to handle these complex situations in the future.

One big developmental benefit to outdoor play that us parents can sometimes find a bit hard to cope with, is the way it teaches our children about risk and about their own personal limits.

Our instinct as parents is to keep our children safe and to protect them from any possible harm.  But if we constantly hover around them while they play, shouting pleas for them to be careful, they’ll grow up scared to ever take risks or push themselves to see what they’re capable of.

When we take a step back and let our children climb that tree or try a new way of getting down the slide they learn so much.

They develop risk assessment skills and learn about things like physics and gravity!

And from trying things and failing they learn to get back up again.  To try again.  To be brave.

This photo of Rhys was taken at the park one day when he faced his fears and climbed up to the top of this wooden climbing frame.

He had been so scared to do it, and I realised that me standing right by him wasn’t actually helping.  So I backed off a bit.  Gave him the space he needed to take a deep breath and go for it.

Those are the clenched fists and determined face of a boy who achieved something he wasn’t sure he could.

And that is the beauty of outdoor play.

It gives our children the chance to try things.  To have fun.  To explore.  To take risks.  To push themselves.  To develop in so many ways.

Disclaimer: this is a sponsored post with esp play.

If you have children who are often anxious and who lack in confidence then there’s a trick you can try to help them feel braver and more confident.

What’s really great about it is you only need a few minutes to try it.

All you have to do is get your child to stand in an open, powerful stance for 2 minutes.  These power poses have been found to influence our hormones so that we’re less reactive to stress and get a boost of testosterone which makes us feel more confident.

This idea of power poses was made popular by social psychologist Amy Cuddy in a TED talk in 2012.

She discussed how she and her colleagues had found that holding our bodies in a way that opens them up instead of curling in on ourselves can have a big effect on how confident we feel.

In her talk she mentioned that standing in a power pose before an interview can reduce our anxiety and make us feel more confident.  Doing it before the interview starts means that we walk into the room feeling more powerful and much less nervous.  It’s not really about standing in a certain way so that others view us as more confident, it’s about doing it to change the way we feel about ourselves.

Now, there have been various studies carried out since Cuddy gave this talk that seem to dispute her findings.

But I think there’s still something in it, even if it’s more of a placebo effect than an actual biological change brought on by standing in these power poses.

For children who are nervous about going in to school or scared about starting a new club then getting them to stand in one of these power poses for 2 minutes before you go could really help them.

It’s like how faking a smile can actually make us feel happier.

If we stand with our bodies in a big, confident pose then we’ll start to believe that we are genuinely more confident.

So if you’d like to try this with your children, here are 3 different power poses they can try:

The Wonder Woman pose

For this pose your child should stand strong with their feet a bit wider than hip width apart.

They then need to put both hands on their hips.  If they want to they can make fists, or just put their hands straight on their hips.

The superhero pose

Get your child to plant their feet firmly about hip width apart.

They then need to make a fist with one hand and then put it up in the air, like a superhero about to fly off to rescue someone.

The performer pose

For this pose your child needs to stand strong with feet a bit wider than hip distance apart.

Then put their arms up in the air in a ‘V’ shape, like a performer in front of the crowd at the end of an amazing show or an athlete celebrating winning a race.

The key thing with all of the poses is for your child to stand straight and tall, and take up as much space as possible.

When we make ourselves big and visible (even when we do it private) we feel more powerful and, as a result, less anxious.

A big part of this is that it’s not about changing how other people see us and what they think of us.

It’s about changing how we feel about ourselves.

A study by Binel et al 2012 found that people who stood in a power pose like the ones mentioned above were more likely to rate themselves as feeling confident than people who stood in a smaller, ‘doubtful posture’.  And it does make sense.  If we stand in a hunched position with our arms crossed in front of our bodies we tend to feel smaller too.

Opening up our bodies and standing tall does make us feel more in control and ready for action.

So next time your child is anxious or scared about something, try getting them to stand in one of these poses for a few minutes and see if it helps them feel more confident.

This post is linked up with KCACOLS.

I have a feeling that every parent at some point has felt that all they do is nag or shout at their children before they seem to listen and do what they’re being asked to do.  The thing is, so often the answer to the problem involves looking at our own actions and behaviours.

It’s so easy to get frustrated and think ‘my child never listens to me’, but the best way to help the situation is to stop and think about how clearly we’re actually communicating with them.

Here are some things we can do to get our children to listen, without ending up shouting.

Think before you speak

You can’t expect your children to listen to you if you randomly shout instructions to them from another room.

So before you speak make sure you’re standing close to them, or at the very least are in the same room.  Then make sure that you have their attention by using their name and speak clearly while looking directly at them.

Keep it simple

When you need your child to do something, keep your instructions as simple as possible.

Young children especially can find it hard to remember 2-stage requests, so stick to asking them to do one thing at a time.  So if  you need your young child to put their shoes on, instead of giving a long-winded speech about it, stick with a simple “shoes on please!”.

Older children may well start to tune you out if you ramble on too much about them needing to do something.  So again, keep it short and snappy when you ask them to do something.

Focus on what you DO want

This is a piece of advice my sister gave me years ago and it’s brilliant.

Children often focus on and remember the last part of what you say to them.  So if you say “please don’t run off ahead of me”, what they might actually hear and focus on are the words “run off ahead of me”, and so off they’ll go.

What you need to be doing is tell them what you do want them to do, not what you don’t want them to do.

So in this example you’re much better off saying “please walk nicely by my side” or “let’s skip along together”.  You’re basically looking at switching from negative “don’t do that” instructions to more positive, “do this please” versions.

Put yourself in your child’s position

Again this is about slowing down a bit and thinking before asking your child to do something.

If they’re in the middle of an activity, is it really fair to expect them to stop it immediately just because you say so?  How would you feel if someone came and demanded you do something, out of the blue, while you’re in the middle of doing something?

Try to give a bit of warning whenever you can that something will be happening or if they’ll need to do something.

So let them know 10 minutes before dinner is ready that they only have that much time left to play before they’ll need to stop and come to the table.

Now, this can also be applied in a way to situations like children running off in the park or messing around in the library.  As parents we need to stop and put ourselves in their shoes a bit.  To remember that they don’t necessarily know how to behave in these situations.  So we need to talk to them in advance as much as we can, to set our expectations for how they need to behave.

Explain things rather than just give demands

Following on from the last point, we need to remember that children don’t know everything we know, and they see the world differently from us a lot of the time.

They may not understand why we’re asking them to do certain things, so it makes it easier for them to go along with it if we explain the why behind our requests.

If we want our children to tidy up their toys it’s helpful to explain to them that they might get lost or broken if they’re left out, that it makes it easier for them to find them next time they want to play if they’re put away nicely and that other people want to use the space and it’s nice to consider their needs and feelings.

Give them options

Children often feel that they have no control over what happens in their day to day lives, and sometimes saying ‘no’ and refusing to do what we ask is simply them trying to assert some control.

One way around this is to give them choices, to help them feel that they have a say in various things that happen.  The key here though, is to only offer a couple of choices and make sure you’re happy with either option.

So, “put this top on, we need to go” becomes “it’s time to get dressed now, would you like to wear the red top or the yellow one?”

“Brush your teeth and put your shoes on” changes to “would you like to do your teeth first or put your shoes on first?”

You can also use options like this to give consequences to your child’s actions.

So, rather than getting frustrated when your toddler won’t listen and hold your hand while walking, you give them option of holding your hand or being carried.  If they won’t put a hat on in the park then you tell them that they either wear the hat or you both leave the park.  It’s their choice.

Just make sure you follow through with any consequences you talk about.

Acknowledge when they do listen

When your children do listen and cooperate with you, make a point of acknowledging it.

Give them a big smile and a hug and thank them for doing as they were asked.  When behaviour is acknowledged it’s more likely to be repeated in the future.

Not all of these things will work with all children, all of the time. 

But that’s true of most things when it comes to parenting in my experience!

Hopefully though with a bit of time and consistency, you’ll find something in here that works for you and your family to get your children to listen without anyone nagging or shouting.