Drop the Games Console, Turn off the TV and Start the Fun!

July 1, 2011 - PRLog -- Here at DiscoverMe (http://www.discovermetoys.co.uk/), we talk a lot about the importance of making the time to play with your children. It’s not just retailers of childrens toys who know this is vital for our kids, however. Researchers into child development fear that unless we make more time to play one-on-one with our children, we’ll be raising a ‘robot generation’, lacking social and creative skills and the ability to interact well with others. Well it’s time to drop the games console, turn off the TV and start the fun!
   
We live in an increasingly automated and isolated world, one where adults are glued to their Android phones, IPods, TVs and games consoles. Unfortunately even young children are spending far too much time in isolated pursuits such as watching cartoons and playing on computer games. Child development experts fear that this is creating children who lack core skills that they will only learn through interactive play. The good news is that it’s easy to stop this happening – simply make time to play! There’s a time to watch TV and - if you allow it from a young age - then a time to play on computer games, but as long as it doesn’t sacrifice interactive, simple and fun playtime, whether that’s with educational toys and books or with a football in the back garden.

One of the reasons parents cite for not playing with their children more is a lack of time. Work and daily pressures in our fast-paced modern life leaves little time for play, or so the argument goes. But when parents do make a concerted effort to play with their children and not just stare at the TV with them, they report that not only did their child love the interaction, but that they also found it an enjoyable stress-reliever. So much of what we do as adults is because of repetition and behaviour patterns that we have built without necessarily realising it. It’s just as easy to break a habit as it is to make one, however, which goes for both adults and children. Parents who spend some of the time they used to watching TV to unwind after work playing with activity toys and games with their kids say that they personally come away more refreshed and relaxed while the difference in their child is plain to see.

It’s all too easy to get into bad habits and to pass them on to our kids. All it takes as parents is the effort to change our regular pattern behaviour, turn off the TV and games consoles and start the fun. The result is not just happy, relaxed parents, but more importantly, children who will grow up to be well-rounded instead of robots.

If you’d like to know more about child development and browse through the very best developmental children and baby toys on the market, go to http://www.discovermetoys.co.uk/.