by Kathy Eugster, MA
March 3, 2025
Are you unsure how to encourage your child to play with you?
Is your child rejecting your efforts to play together?
This is a very common problem. Over the many years when I was working with families as a play therapist, I found that:
- some parents were not sure how to engage with their child together in play, and
- some children were resistant to playing together with their parents.
This can be frustrating and disappointing for both children and parents, especially when a child wants their parent to be a play partner, or when a parent wants to enjoy spending time with their child and to connect with them in a meaningful and positive way. And, we have lots of research evidence showing that parent-child play is important for many reasons, but especially for building a strong and healthy parent-child relationship.
This blog will outline some simple steps parents can take to positively engage with their child in interactive play activities so both parent and child are enjoying each other’s company.
Step 1: Set Up the Play Area
Start by deciding on the play activity. Get everything you need for the activity ready ahead of time.
- Choose something that your child is interested in. For example, maybe your child loves dinosaurs or unicorns, so you would think up an activity that would incorporate these interests, such as setting up a dinosaur park, building a unicorn castle, playing a dinosaur-themed game, or drawing different kinds of unicorns together.
- Also, think of the way your child likes to play. Does your child like active games, building or making things, or making up a pretend story? Make sure the activity is age-appropriate as well.
Step 2: Explain and Start the Activity
Get your child’s attention and explain the activity to your child clearly and concisely.
Then, start engaging in the play yourself. Depending on the activity, you can:
- start building or setting up the activity
- get the game started
- elaborate what your child is doing, for example if your child is starting to build a pen for a dinosaur, you could start to build a shelter for the dinosaur beside the pen
- pretend to be another character, for example, pretend to be a unicorn looking for a friend or a dinosaur looking for dinner
Step 3: Notice How Your Child Responds
Is your child accepting your directions and incorporating your ideas into the play? Is your child focused on the activity? Is your child adding their own ideas on how the play unfolds? Great! That means your child is interested in what you have suggested and is beginning to engage in the play.
On the other hand, your child may be resistant to your suggestions. For example, your child may be sitting quietly not doing anything.
Or, your child may start to become dysregulated and out-of-control.
If this is the case, what is it that your child needs?
- Do you need to calm and regulate your own nervous system and talk and move more slowly to help regulate your child’s nervous system?
- Do you need to increase your emotional level by being more playful or even goofy or surprising?
- Does your child need some guidance from you?
- Do you need to change the play activity?
Your goal is to get your child interested and engaged in the activity in a regulated state, so notice how your child responds to what you are doing and provide whatever your child needs.
Step 4: Let Your Child Lead the Play
Once your child is interested and engaged in the play activity, you can “back off” to a more child-directed play style:
- Allow your child to make their own decisions and choices as to what to do in the play activity, and then accept these choices and decisions as long as things stay safe and nondestructive.
- Follow your child’s directions as long as it is safe.
- Pay attention to your child and describe out loud what your child is doing, paraphrase what your child tells you, and identify any feelings coming up in the play.
- Focus on your child’s strengths and efforts in doing something or mastering a task.
- Limit unsafe and destructive behaviors.
Here’s an Additional Tip
Instead of ending playtime abruptly, don’t forget to give 5- and 1-minute warnings before ending playtime. This makes for an easier transition out of playtime.
Further Information
Please see the following blog article for more information on how to engage your child in play: Let’s Play! Using Parent-Directed Playtime Strategies to Encourage Play
You may want to consider this:
If you are interested in learning more about parent-child or caregiver-child play, please see my book, Play Skills for Parents: Connecting With Your Child Through Play.
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Copyright Kathy Eugster, MA, 2025.
Please feel free to pass on this article to anyone you think might find it useful.
Contact me at: keugster@telus.net