Whether princess, policeman, doctor, or pirate, almost every adult remembers the heroes of his childhood days. Often the memory of it is associated with numerous own stories and experiences. how to package mugs for shipping whether abstract fantasy stories or everyday mother-father-child situations, as soon as a distribution of roles takes place, the requirements for role-playing games are considered fulfilled.
But what exactly is a role play and what influence does this have on the child’s development?
What is a role-playing game?
In a role-playing game, a story is experienced or told on the basis of plenty of imagination. The players lead their characters through an imaginary world. In doing so, they slip into the role of fictitious personalities, real people, animals, or even objects. One’s own role is actively experienced and can be influenced at any time by one’s own actions. Usually, role-playing games are carried out in a group of several other players. Using appropriate play materials such as dolls or stuffed animals, role-playing games can also be implemented by just one person.
Why are role-playing games so important for children?
Role plays give children the opportunity to experience the world of adults in a tangible way. From different perspectives, everyday events can be reenacted, supplemented, or reinvented. Through the distribution of roles, children learn to see the world through different eyes. This usually makes it much easier for them to develop an understanding of certain rules and to respond to the feelings of others.
Furthermore, harmonious role-playing games require that the participating players agree on a game sequence. Mutual tolerance, integration into a group, and adherence to agreed rules strengthen the social behavior of children among themselves. In order for the game to run satisfactorily for everyone involved, it is important not only tolerance but also to represent one’s own opinion. The development of individual role plays makes a concrete contribution to promoting social behavior.
In addition, role-playing games offer the unrestricted freedom to create your own storyline. On the one hand, this stimulates one’s own creativity and, on the other hand, inner conflicts and fears can be mastered in this way. Role-playing games offer children enough space to break issued prohibitions with the help of chosen characters. Fears are also demonstrably easier to cope with through imitation. It can often be observed that children integrate their own experienced events into their role plays. On closer inspection, conclusions can be drawn about existing worries or needs.
Playing and interacting together also supports the linguistic expressiveness of children among themselves. Since role-playing requires complex actions, progress in body language and motor skills can also be seen in relation to child development.
From what age are role-playing games useful?
At about 2 years of age, children begin to imitate individual everyday actions in solo play. The first sand cakes are baked and the doll experiences maternal affection. Even if these actions are not yet a classic role-playing game, preparatory features are recognizable in this behavior.
As soon as children discover themselves as an independent personality at the age of around 3 years, interest in other children is usually awakened. Now there are more and more interactions with each other, and playing on your own is increasingly diminishing. In order for the first simple role-playing games to be implemented at all, basic communication skills are required that enable initial agreements. More complex actions, which can be planned in advance before the start of the game, usually develop over the course of the fourth year of life. Due to the creative freedom, role-playing games from about three years to well into primary school age are enjoying increasing popularity.
How can parents encourage role-playing?
If children are immersed in a role play, they experience their specially created actions on an emotional level. If a parent is asked to make himself temporarily available as a patient, this request should not be rejected if possible. Ultimately, it is the creative togetherness that can promote the child’s social behavior.
In order to give creativity as much freedom as possible in role plays, parents should allow their children to use different rooms. In the kitchen, in the hallway, or in the garden, the conditions for certain role-playing games are often more favorable than in the game room. Various objects such as merchant shops or children’s kitchens also stimulate the child’s imagination. However, the equipment here should not be too extensive, as too detailed objects limit the imagination of children.
Much more popular, however, are simple props, which can be converted in many ways. For this purpose, everyday things are particularly suitable, which for various reasons are no longer suitable for further use.best coffee mug particularly popular are, for example, discarded mobile phones, shoes, bags, suitcases, hats, and cameras. But also a disguised box filled with costumes or old clothes of the parents is often liked.
In addition, boxes of all kinds are a welcome opportunity to make backdrops or other props such as a knight’s helmet. Blankets and pillows are also well received by children, as they can be flexibly integrated into countless role plays.
Since the child’s imagination knows almost no bounds, the prerequisites for a functioning role-playing game include sufficient space in combination with versatile simple props.