You can learn quite a bit about a five year old by moving one game piece ahead of theirs. You may discover within seconds how they feel about injustice, disappointment, patience, losing, and whether the rule they loved five minutes ago still seems fair now that it is working against them. I have watched this change across the years in my own kids. A younger child can experience one lost turn as though the evening has collapsed, while an older child understands that the game keeps moving and another turn is coming. That difference is not only age; it is practice. Children who play repeatedly have lived through enough small defeats to know that disappointment can pass without destroying the experience. That may be one of the quietest ways resilience gets built.
Dr. Kathy said something during our conversation that made me stop: if kids never play board games, card games, tag, playground games, or other activities where things do not always go their way, how do they learn to come back from defeat? We usually reserve the word resilience for serious hardship, but perhaps resilience begins in much smaller places. It starts when your sibling gets the card you needed, when somebody else reaches the finish first, or when you swing and miss. In a healthy game, the child experiences a real emotion without a catastrophic consequence. They can be frustrated and keep participating. That is excellent practice for the larger disappointments life eventually brings.
Play Gives Kids a Safe Place to Practice Losing
A child who loses a game does not need us to pretend they actually won. They need enough security to be disappointed without making defeat mean something larger about who they are. That is why play can become such a healthy training ground for emotional maturity. The child learns, I wanted that outcome, I did not get it, and I am still okay. They may even learn that another person's success does not diminish their own value. Those lessons are difficult to teach through a lecture because they have to be experienced. Play puts the lesson directly into the child's hands.
Repeated experience also changes the speed of recovery. The first few losses may involve tears or a sudden desire to invent new rules. Over time, a child may still dislike losing while becoming less controlled by the feeling. That distinction matters because maturity does not mean disappointment disappears. It means the child can carry disappointment without having to quit, lash out, or change the entire environment. The game table gives them hundreds of small chances to develop that capacity before the stakes are much higher.
Adults Change What Children Learn From Play
This is why I do not think kids should live in a completely separate world of play while adults stand somewhere else supervising. Dr. Kathy talked about the importance of adults being present because children are not only learning the rules of a game; they are watching how mature people handle what happens inside it. They see whether Dad gloats, whether Mom gets irritated when she loses, whether Grandpa is patient with someone who needs a rule explained again, and whether an older cousin lets a younger child participate without humiliating them. Those are not formal character lessons, but children absorb them all the same. Play creates an ordinary place where virtues become visible.
Dr. Kathy remembered large family gatherings with grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and others sitting around a table playing together. Years later, simply naming the game can bring back the room, the voices, the jokes, and the people who were there. That is part of the power of intergenerational play. The activity gives people something to do while relationships grow around it. Children do not need adults hovering over them every moment, but they do need enough shared life with adults that wisdom and character are passed along naturally.
Kids Need to Know We Actually Enjoy Them
Dr. Kathy regularly says that children do not only want to know they are loved; they also want to know they are liked. That difference matters. A child may assume Mom and Dad love them because parents are supposed to, while still wondering whether those same adults actually enjoy being around them. Sitting down to play communicates something simple and powerful: I chose to spend this time with you. The message gets stronger when the adult is not secretly scrolling, rushing through the game, or treating the activity as an obligation to complete.
That does not mean parents have to love every game their children love. There are games I would gladly never play again, and I suspect most parents have one of those somewhere in a closet. But there is value in occasionally entering a child's world without requiring the child to first become interested in ours. Shared play tells kids that relationship is not always built around adult productivity. Sometimes being together is the purpose.
Connection Is One Reason Online Games Are So Powerful
This helps explain why platforms like Roblox are so attractive to children. The games matter, but connection matters too. Kids can build, compete, explore, communicate, and interact with other people in ways that feel social even when everyone is physically separate. Dr. Kathy did not dismiss that desire; she asked whether families could provide more real opportunities for kids to connect with parents, grandparents, cousins, classmates, and friends. That is an important question because technology often succeeds by offering a digital version of something children genuinely need.
If the deepest draw is belonging, simply removing the platform without strengthening real relationships leaves the original need untouched. Parents can become more intentional about inviting friends over, saying yes to appropriate gatherings, creating places where cousins want to stay a while, or becoming what Dr. Kathy called the old fashioned “Kool Aid house.” The goal is not to eliminate every digital interaction. It is to make sure the child's richest relationships are not happening primarily through an environment controlled by a company rather than by people who actually know and love them.
Online Safety Is Not Something Parents Can Outsource
Our conversation began with Roblox because the company has been responding to serious concerns about children interacting with adults online, including new age verification measures intended to limit inappropriate contact. Those safeguards may be useful, but parents should be careful about treating a platform's safety system as the final word on whether an environment is appropriate for their child. A company's responsibility and a parent's responsibility are not identical. Technology companies manage millions of users and create policies; parents know the actual child sitting in the bedroom or family room. That personal responsibility cannot be transferred to an algorithm or age gate.
Dr. Kathy described parental protection as an expression of love. A child may dislike a boundary and still be deeply formed by knowing someone cared enough to set it. Parents can say, “I hear that you are disappointed, but I am still responsible for providing security here.” That kind of firmness does something beyond protecting one evening online. It teaches the child that trustworthy authority is willing to say no when love requires it.
Security Makes It Easier for Kids to Ask for Help
Dr. Kathy tied this directly to the first of the Five Core Needs: security, or who can I trust? When children know their parents are paying attention, they become more likely to bring confusing situations to them. A child who receives an uncomfortable message online should have enough confidence in the relationship to show Mom or Dad without first wondering whether they will be blamed or immediately punished for saying something happened. That security is invaluable because the internet can place children in situations they do not have the maturity to interpret alone. They need someone trustworthy to help them understand what they are seeing.
That same pattern reaches beyond gaming. A secure teenager may ask Dad what to do about a party invitation, a friendship problem, an awkward conversation, or something they encountered online. They learn that difficult questions belong in relationships with wise people rather than in a private search bar. That is one of the most important outcomes of parental involvement. Protection should not merely keep danger out; it should make asking for help easier.
Play Is One of the Places Character Becomes Visible
Games reveal qualities that can stay hidden in more controlled settings. A child who seems agreeable during schoolwork may suddenly become highly competitive when a board game begins. Another who is normally quiet may become the person who carefully explains the rules to everyone else. Somebody cheats, somebody shares, somebody becomes impatient, and somebody insists the youngest child gets another chance. Play gives parents a view into character because the child is often less guarded. That creates opportunities for correction and encouragement that feel connected to real behavior rather than abstract moral instruction.
We can say, “I noticed you stayed gracious even when you were losing,” or “You kept changing the rules when things did not go your way, and that made it hard for everybody else to enjoy playing.” Both statements teach something. One names virtue; the other names a behavior that needs maturity. Because the situation is relatively small, the correction can also remain small. A child gets another opportunity the next time the cards are dealt.
Play Also Teaches the Difference Between Skill and Chance
Another subtle gift of games is that children learn not every result says something definitive about them. Sometimes you win because you played well and sometimes you lose because somebody else made a better decision. Dr. Kathy mentioned that games help children learn the difference between skill and chance, which is an important life lesson. Kids need to understand that outcomes contain different variables and should not all be interpreted as statements about personal worth.
That can help children become both humbler and more confident. They can take responsibility when preparation or strategy mattered without assuming every bad outcome proves incompetence. They can also win without pretending every success happened only because they were superior. That balance is useful far beyond play. Adult life is full of situations where effort matters greatly, and outcomes still include circumstances outside our control.
The Best Play Leaves Room for Imagination
There is another difference between many forms of real world play and highly designed digital entertainment: children often have to supply more of the experience themselves. A ball does not tell you what game to play with it. A deck of cards contains possibilities rather than one prescribed outcome. A backyard, pile of snow, cardboard box, set of blocks, or collection of sticks invites the child to decide what happens next. That requires imagination and initiative. Digital games can absolutely involve creativity, but they still exist inside rules, graphics, rewards, and systems somebody else already built.
Unstructured play gives kids a chance to create the world before they enter it. They negotiate rules, invent stories, assign roles, change direction, argue, compromise, and start over. Those moments are inefficient, which is partly why they are so valuable. Children are doing the cognitive and social work themselves. The entertainment is not arriving fully assembled.
David Was Practicing Before Anyone Knew What It Was For
The biblical story that came to mind was David before Goliath. When David speaks to Saul in 1 Samuel 17, he reaches back to his experience tending sheep and defending them from a lion and a bear. He had already developed skill, courage, judgment, and trust in God long before anyone imagined him standing in front of a giant. His childhood and adolescence contained ordinary responsibilities that became preparation for something much larger. David did not know what every skill would eventually be used for.
That is one of the reasons childhood play matters to me. We do not know which ordinary experiences will become part of a child's future confidence. The kid who spends years throwing, building, inventing games, learning strategy, caring for animals, climbing, negotiating with siblings, and recovering from losses is practicing things that may someday matter in places we cannot predict. Parents do not need to turn play into a résumé building activity. The value is precisely that children are developing while simply living.
Play Should Be Allowed to Be Play
There is a temptation once we recognize the developmental value of play to immediately optimize it. We begin searching for the perfect game that develops logic, social skills, reading, math, emotional regulation, and future employability all before dessert. That misses something. Dr. Kathy began by saying play brings joy and rest. Kids need experiences that are worth doing because they are fun, not because every adult can defend them with a list of measurable outcomes.
The formation happens partly because the child is engaged enough to stay. They laugh, compete, connect, and repeat the experience. Resilience and social learning grow inside something enjoyable rather than because it's the reason the child agreed to participate. Parents can appreciate what play is doing without constantly announcing the lesson. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is shuffle the cards and begin.
Build a Family Culture Where Play Still Has Somewhere to Live
Real play will not necessarily happen automatically when digital entertainment is always easier to access. Families may need to make room for it intentionally. Keep games where kids can reach them. Invite people over. Let the dinner table remain cluttered with cards a little longer. Make it normal for grandparents and teenagers to play something together rather than assuming everyone should disappear into their own age group after dinner. These are small decisions, but they create an environment where shared play can become part of family life.
The goal is not to create a screen free childhood or prove that every old fashioned game is morally superior to technology. It is to protect enough real world space that kids continue developing through embodied relationships, imagination, competition, and shared experience. Online games may have a place, but they should not become the only place children know how to play. Childhood needs rooms where people can see one another's faces when somebody loses.
Using the 8 Great Smarts to Expand Real World Play
Word Smart: Try storytelling games, word games, trivia, charades, Mad Libs, or games that require conversation and creative language.
Logic Smart: Use chess, strategy games, puzzles, escape-room challenges, building games, and activities that reward planning and problem solving.
Picture Smart: Draw together, build models, create maps, design forts, sculpt, photograph, or use games with strong visual and spatial elements.
Music Smart: Play rhythm games, sing, learn instruments together, create silly songs, or use music as part of family game nights.
Body Smart: Shoot hoops, wrestle appropriately, dance, play tag, toss a Frisbee, bowl, skate, build, or choose activities that require movement.
Nature Smart: Explore outside, garden, hunt for patterns, build in the snow, collect natural objects, identify wildlife, or create games in outdoor spaces.
People Smart: Choose activities with teams, conversation, negotiation, cooperation, and opportunities to learn how other people think.
Self Smart: Leave room for independent imaginative play and help kids notice which kinds of play actually restore them, challenge them, or leave them wanting more.
Remember: However your child is smart, play can become one of the most natural places for growth because children do not have to know they are practicing maturity while it happens. They are learning how to lose, wait, recover, cooperate, imagine, and enjoy other people. They are discovering that adults want to be with them and that home can be a place where fun and formation belong together. Sometimes the next step in building a resilient child may be much less complicated than we think. Sit down, deal the cards, and play.