Better Emotional Regulation

 Did you know that children who engage in social play and interactions are 30% more likely to exhibit effective emotional regulation compared to their less socially engaged peers?

Developing social skills helps your player learn to manage and express their emotions appropriately. Social interactions provide opportunities to practice empathy, patience, and conflict resolution. And gaming can help. But, you need to be intentional.

After cooperative and multiplayer gaming sessions, hold discussions with your player where you can talk about their experiences, challenges, and successes. This reflection helps reinforce positive social behaviors and learning.

Use these discussions to teach important social concepts such as sportsmanship, dealing with failure, and celebrating others' successes.

Questions to ask could be: What did you just encounter? What challenges did you face? What were your successes? Did you show sportsmanship? How did you deal with failure? Did you celebrate others’ wins? And of course, you know your kid so you know long and deep to go.

With that as the background, you can guide your player to think about what types of behavior and/or thoughts that you want them to repeat and also what you want them to stay away from. This reflection helps reinforce the positive social behaviors and learning through experience.

The Bible echoes this idea in Proverbs 16:20: "The one who understands a matter finds success, and the one who trusts in the Lord will be happy." 

Make the connection: How might we have conversations with our players that help them develop the social skills to improve their social interactions?

We are #ForTheGamer and help players play with purpose and win for good.