Playing Board Games = Better Grades
We love to play games with our kids.
There’s just so much to like about it. It gives us a great time to be face-to-face interacting and bonding. It also gives us a great glimpse into their budding personalities.
But can playing with our kids also help them get better grades in school?
According to a study we just read about, the answer is YES!
How parents play with their children matters. In a study that spanned 15 years, researchers at Utah State University have demonstrated a positive connection between how parents play with toddlers and the children’s future academic success.
They found a correlation between the early parent-child interactions and later academic achievement.
We’ve had a feeling that this might be the case for a long time simply because we’ve seen how our kids have developed their minds as we’ve played a wide variety of games. And in this sense we’re not just talking about board games.
It starts with the very simple games we’d play with our kids when they were very little – Storytelling games at bedtime or memory games as we’d drive places or go on vacation. A number of creative play time ideas are talked about in the news article as well.
Then as the kids grew, our board game collection started to increase and introduce a wider variety of games that helped them develop a number of other thought processes, like planning, strategy, trade-offs, relative values and much more. So of course we’d believe that these skills would serve them well as they do schoolwork.
Well, now we can point to a scientific study that validates what we’ve felt all along.
One of the other things we really find interesting about the study is the impact of both mom and dad.
The results document the particular importance of two things: how crucial certain kinds of play are to a child’s future and playtime with both mom and dad. Most research has focused on interactions with moms. They found dads are very important, too, she says.
You bet we are!
Both mom and dad play a critical role in a child’s development. But if circumstances don’t allow for both mom and dad to be there. Then forge ahead anyway. I can speak from experience in that matter because my dad passed away when I was just 3. And our mom did a great job of keeping us tight as a family and helping us develop well by spending all the time she could with us. It’s just a matter of priorities.
When we started playing board games and card games with our kids, we didn’t do so with this in mind. We just wanted to have fun. And we still do!
This may be a nice bi-product, but we’re still all about just spending time and having fun together!
We’re interested in your thoughts.
Have playing games (and board/card games) with your children helped them achieve more academically?
Take our poll and leave a comment by clicking on the “read more” link.
Leave a comment and let us know what you think.
Quoting a comment from Tom Steynen (Tekar):
“While I like to agree with your conclusion in general, the article in question is hardly about board games. I think it’s a bit presumptuous to extrapolate the conclusions from the article to board games. “
Tom’s right that the article and the research study weren’t specifically about board games. And most of the research was focused on the early years of childhood and early education. The point that we love most is that it’s all about parent interaction with their children in play.
Quoting a comment from Tom Steynen (Tekar):
“While I like to agree with your conclusion in general, the article in question is hardly about board games. I think it’s a bit presumptuous to extrapolate the conclusions from the article to board games. “
Tom’s right that the article and the research study weren’t specifically about board games. And most of the research was focused on the early years of childhood and early education. The point that we love most is that it’s all about parent interaction with their children in play.
Although the article is not specific towards board games, it does encourage parents to play with their kids in imagiative and open-ended ways. I believe board games are definitely imaginative and allow kids to think in strategic ways without realizing they are using higher level types of thinking. Young children play board games mainly for fun with some higher level thinking, depending on the game, but it teaches them social interaction and the oh so difficult lesson of losing. I think board games are a great way to play with your children. Plus, it’s a way to get the whole family to play together, which would probably not happen otherwise. Keep in mind I think board games are one way to play with your kids, but not the only way. Will your kids acheive better grades from playing board games? I’m one to believe they will. There are many other studies that have found when both parents are involved with their children’s lives, those children inevitably do better in school and are more successful in life. So I say, “Bring on the board games.”
Thank you Trent for the article.
Thanks for your comments Renee.
Just last night our oldest son directly tied a board game to work he’s doing in school. They just started discussing D-Day in history class and he asked if there are scenarios in Memoir ’44 that cover battles that day. I told him that it happened to be the scenario that he and I played repeatedly one day and I could never get the victory. And it gave us the chance to talk about it more.
Although the article is not specific towards board games, it does encourage parents to play with their kids in imagiative and open-ended ways. I believe board games are definitely imaginative and allow kids to think in strategic ways without realizing they are using higher level types of thinking. Young children play board games mainly for fun with some higher level thinking, depending on the game, but it teaches them social interaction and the oh so difficult lesson of losing. I think board games are a great way to play with your children. Plus, it’s a way to get the whole family to play together, which would probably not happen otherwise. Keep in mind I think board games are one way to play with your kids, but not the only way. Will your kids acheive better grades from playing board games? I’m one to believe they will. There are many other studies that have found when both parents are involved with their children’s lives, those children inevitably do better in school and are more successful in life. So I say, “Bring on the board games.”
Thank you Trent for the article.
Thanks for your comments Renee.
Just last night our oldest son directly tied a board game to work he’s doing in school. They just started discussing D-Day in history class and he asked if there are scenarios in Memoir ’44 that cover battles that day. I told him that it happened to be the scenario that he and I played repeatedly one day and I could never get the victory. And it gave us the chance to talk about it more.