“Charge!” “Bring him down!”. Within minutes, I was knifed and tackled to the floor by two Ninjas (my young sons) with “serious” injuries inflicted on me. Luckily, no actual suffering had occurred. There were only plenty of laughter and lots of sweat because boy, this playtime with my children was a real physical workout.
For children, play is an important activity where they can learn about themselves and their world. But the play between fathers and their children seems to offer a unique experience for children because it has been found to be more physical, rowdy, and competitive. Sword-fighting and wrestling with their kids are some favorite Rough-and-Tumble Play (RTP) that I have witnessed fathers do with their kids. Rough-and-tumble play is a type of challenging parenting behavior that promotes children to be assertive, to take chances, and to overcome limits. These activities challenge the kids to approach novel situations, explore their environments, and take physical and socioemotional risks through a balance of encouragement and limit-setting. Challenging them to a race, daring them to jump across that “long-gang” (Hokkien for drain), swinging the child, or making the child “fly” are instances of some favorite challenging parenting behaviors in Singapore.
The benefits of these challenging parenting behaviors (also known as activation parenting) for children's development were recently discussed in a research paper that reviewed studies looking at fathers’ play activities with children. The paper found that these activities between fathers and their children can be very useful in helping children develop self-regulation (control their emotional reactions, behaviors, and attention), and reduce externalizing (e.g., aggression, bullying, hyperactivity) and internalizing problems (e.g., depression, anxiety).
Rough-and-Tumble play and other challenging parenting behaviors help promote the father-child activation relationship which complements the father-child attachment relationship. Both mirror the needs of the child to explore the world while feeling secure and safe with someone they trust. The attachment relationship fulfills the child’s needs for safety and closeness with a parent while the activation relationship opens the child to the world by encouraging the child to explore and take risks.
However, in these highly activating and stimulating activities, limit-setting acts as an important balance to prevent a child from being too activated which could lead to injuries and other safety risks. Imagine a play activity where a father is about to take on his child in the final round of the ultimate wrestling world competition where the winner takes all including prize money, world title, and what’s left of the loser’s dignity. In this highly arousing activity, the child would be excited with adrenaline and pumped up to play. Here, limit-setting by the father is key as a balance to the high-stimulating activity to prevent a child from being too activated. Limit-setting includes setting rules for the game or redirecting a child who becomes too aggressive during rough-and-tumble play. Limit-setting also requires teaching, guiding, and modeling to the child how to set goals and limits, how to assess risk in the situation, or how to regulate their emotions when they win or lose. Research has shown that fathers promote their children’s development of self-regulation by modeling their regulated behaviors, responding sensitively to their children, and providing opportunities for their children to practice regulating their emotions and behaviors during these highly stimulating play activities. Fathers’ limit setting provides an external source of regulation to scaffold the child’s development.
So fathers, here are four tips on playing with your children: 1) Set some rules such as what is acceptable or not acceptable in this play activity; 2) Let your child win or lose. As the strongest and biggest player, fathers might have to let themselves be overpowered or caught so the child can win at least some of the time; 3) Different play for different ages. Gentle play with younger children while older children are good with rough-and-tumbling; 4) Allow time to calm down before the next activity.
Resources:
https://www.fatherhood.gov/dadtalk-blog/importance-play-how-fathers-can-use-play-promote-development
https://raisingchildren.net.au/toddlers/videos/rough-play-tips
Written by: Gerard Chung