Play and Creativity
Free, self-directed play isn’t just fun for kids — it’s essential practice for life, and it shapes your child's resilience, confidence, and problem-solving skills, along with social skills.
When children make up games, negotiate rules with friends, and climb a little higher than feels comfortable, they’re learning to manage fear, solve problems, and calm themselves down. These experiences strengthen the brain’s wiring for resilience. Without them, children can feel less confident and more anxious when they face challenges later on.
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Why Play Matters
Independent, self-directed play isn’t just fun for kids. Whether your child is playing with other kids or by themself, play is essential practice for life, and it shapes your child's resilience, confidence, and problem-solving skills.
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Supporting Your Child To Play Independently
Dr. Laura....I have free play time on our schedule every morning, just like you recommend. But when I tell my kids to go play, they beg for screens, they whine that they don't know what to do, they don't have any good toys, they need me to play with them. This is the only chance I have to get any work done, and I need that time. Why can't they play by themselves?!"Read More
Secrets to Raise a Creative Child
Read More“Preempt the time spent on television and organized activities and have them spend it instead on claiming their imaginations. For in the end, that is all we have. If a thing cannot be imagined first -- a cake, a relationship, a cure for AIDS -- it cannot be. Life is bound by what we can envision.
I cannot plant imagination into my children. I can, however, provide an environment where their creativity is not just another mess to clean up but welcome evidence of grappling successfully with boredom. It is possible for boredom to deliver us to our best selves, the ones that long for risk and illumination and unspeakable beauty.
If we sit still long enough, we may hear the call behind boredom. With practice, we may have the imagination to rise up from the emptiness and answer.”
-Nancy H. Blakey
Play, Creativity and Toys
Do you buy gifts for your child at the holidays? At birthdays? Of course! Then you'll be interested in the research that experiences are more meaningful gifts than material objects, including toys. In fact, most of the toys we buy for our kids, including the ones they beg for, are played with for twenty minutes upon receipt, and then abandoned.
But there are some toys that kids play with over and over, through the years. Not coincidentally, these are also the toys that researchers tell us are beneficial for the child, meaning they will be good for the child's development and will sustain the child's interest over time.
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Liz McIntosh
Dr. Laura's parenting advice completely changed my relationship with my daughter, improved her self-esteem, and transformed our lives. Providing my daughter with acknowledgement of her feelings and point of view reduced her oppositional behaviors and emotional meltdowns to nearly none. - Jodie Tokatlian
Dr. Laura, you have created miracles, large and small, in so many lives and our children thank you.
Folks, she's brilliant. It's wonderful to have parenting experts who don't see the child as the enemy in a locked combat, for one thing. I recommend it.
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Makchoon
I have seen amazing improvement in my *very* angry 17 year-old son after acknowledging that there was a reason he was so angry and acting out. We have had several heartfelt conversations and I have seen a real change in how he treats his younger brother, and how he treats me.
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Andrei
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Lisa Fernandez
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Jennifer B
Yes. It works. And the more rest I get, the more patience I have. It makes a difference.
Dear Dr. Laura Markham! I am a mother of 2 boys - 16 and 7 years old. I am extremely grateful for all the emotional and relational education that you provide us and also for your incredible loving energy to support our evolution as parents, as human beings. I took your course 3 years ago. Although the challenges of the parent-child relationship change almost every year, your parenting principles are equally valuable and effective. It's hard to reprogram the emotional-behavioral pattern learned in my own childhood... so I find it very helpful to go back to your teachings to regain trust and patience as a parent every time new challenges trigger my anxiety. To have more clarity, to reset my energy. Thank you!!
Janina-Madalina Dobrescu
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Dana Questad
