Researchers in Germany discovered several years ago that a child benefits from a playful father.

So playing with your child from an early age increases the long term attachment between parent and child.

I love playing with my children so this is good news for me.

Fathers playtime with their children was the predictor of long-term attachment, even surpassing the security that a mom provides for an infant or toddler. The fathers created that attachment by being sensitive, supporting, and gently challenging during playtime with their toddlers.

So the message here for all dads is to make regular, sensitive playtimes with your children as it is important for their development.

Rich Batten is a graduate from the National Center’s “Train the Trainer” Program.
He has these four suggestions for dads who play with their children:

Make time for play with your kids. It needs to be a real priority.
I agree with this one, no matter how busy your lifestyle is you should always take the time to play with your children.

Maintain a positive tone. Give your “disciplinarian dad” character a break.
In most families the father is the authority figure, it is the case in my home. My daughter tends to disobey her mother a lot but when I tell her to obey her mother she does so without hesitation.
When its playtime you must remove this authoritative figure and bring yourself down to their life and basically act like a kid yourself.

Talk as you play. Ask open-ended questions. Get your children involved in thinking and being creative.
I do this one a lot too, I think it is important to communicate with your child.
In my situation it is a little funny because I am from the U.K. and am living in Brazil, my daughter speaks mostly Portuguese but I insist on speaking to her in English as I want her to learn the two languages. The thing is though she keeps telling me I am speaking wrong and correcting me with the Portuguese words.

Follow their lead sometimes. The imagination of a child is a wondrous thing. Give a little encouragement, and then just watch and see what magic develops.
My daughter has a play tea set, it is so cute and funny because she always asks me to join her and of course I do. She makes me drink imaginary tea and eat imaginary cake. I find it so funny playing imaginary games with my daughter.

One game my daughter loves to play is chase. She is crazy for this, I have to chase her all around the house. Everyday she comes asking me lets play chase, its good for me too as its probably the only exercise I am getting at the moment.

There is a new page that you can find on the main menu called kids being kids. Every week I will be adding new funny video clips and images to this page showing kids being themselves.

Here is a taste of the type of things I will be adding.

The pumpkin dance

No, it is not me dancing I came across this on youtube.