Here are some games you can play with your children to teach them social and emotional skills.

1. What would you do if . . .

This is a game where parents present hypothetical, age-appropriate situations that ask kids to consider how they might deal with difficult situations they face.  For young kids you might ask whether it’s ever OK to lie.  For a school-age child, you might say, “If you saw someone being bullied in the lunch room, and there were no adults around, what would you do?”  Questions like these can be interesting to children and help develop their moral and ethical sensibility.

1. Role-play

Switch roles with your child.  You be your child, and let her be you.  Mutual empathy can go through the roof when we simply see things through the eyes of another person.  Yes, I said mutual empathy.  It’s never bad for a parent to walk a mile (or even a few steps) in the shoes of her kids.

1. Trust fall

This classic youth-group game lets you emphasize the point that you’ll always be there for your child.  Have her face away from you and fall backwards with her eyes closed, believing that you’ll catch her.  Then talk (briefly) about what it means to really trust someone.

1. Expectation challenge
   You can raise some interesting questions by complicating the normal rules  of pretend play.  For instance, if you’re the super-villain being chased by your child, the hero, you might fall down and pretend to have sprained your ankle.  Your child must then consider whether and how to help someone, even if that person is the bad guy.
3. Why was that cashier rude?

When someone has been less than polite, play the “What caused that?” game.  Simply asking the question can begin to create empathy, since the answers could range from “Maybe her mom never taught her to be polite” to “I wonder if something bad happened to one of her kids.”

1. Sardines

In this variation on “Hide and Seek,” one person hides and the rest of the group tries to find him.  As each subsequent person finds the hider, that person squeezes into the hiding place.  Teamwork and cooperation are necessary to succeed.

1. Amoeba

Another “Hide and Seek” spinoff that requires people to work together.  In this case, the seeker searches for the hiders, and when each person is found, she joins with the seeker to find the other hiders.  With each subsequent “find,” the amoeba grows.

Show me what it looks like when you feel…

Ask your the child to act out different emotions, showing what feelings look like on our face and body.  This can create an emotional vocabulary and also develop more self-awareness.

1. Guess how I’m feeling

This is a twist on the previous game.  Here you act out a feeling and have your child guess your emotion.  Again, empathy and emotional intelligence are the goals here. 

Telephone
Remember this one?  Have the whole group sit in a circle, and pass along a message from one person to the next.  Depending on the size of the group, you might want to go around twice.  It can be hilarious to see how much the message changes as it’s passed from one person to the next.  Use this as an opportunity to talk about the importance of communication and really listening.

 View this piece (as a gallery with photos) at mom.me.

When our kids are developmentally ready for a particular topic, and/or they could be exposed to it at school or somewhere else, parents should open the door to conversation about the topic. Let’s continue with the topic of masturbation for argument’s sake. For sure by junior high, if not before, kids will hear about masturbation. If parents have never talked to their child about it by then, but they’ve heard someone talking about it, the child will be forced to draw one of a few conclusions:

1) My parents don’t know about this and can’t shed light on any questions I have;

2) My parents didn’t talk to me about this because they don’t want to talk about it (either they’re uncomfortable talking about it, it’s not something that should be asked about, or they don’t think I should know anything about it); or

3) It’s something embarrassing or shameful and they might think there’s something wrong with me if I ask questions about it or talk about it.

Silence can communicate loudly. When we’re silent about issues with our kids and they know about the topic or have heard about it, we’ve communicated a lot. We’ve told them clearly, “This is something we don’t talk about.”

It’s important to explicitly tell our kids, “You can always talk to me or ask questions about ANYTHING.” But it’s also important to be one step ahead and pay attention to what we ought to be explicitly explaining, or at least opening the door to in our conversations. This is best done when topics come up naturally. If your child hears something on the news or overhears someone making a racist joke, take the moment to ask them what they think, what they noticed, to tell them your feelings and values, to ask them what they would do if different situations arise.

The more we lay this groundwork for open communication, the better the chances are that our kids will really talk to us and that we’ll be able to help them when difficult situations come up in the future.