Parents need to learn art of play with kids

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LONDON: Lack of time and a shortage of inspiration were cited as the main reasons, while one in three parents said they found playtime boring. More than half of the children surveyed said they would like to spend more time playing with their parents.

The State of Play: Back to Basics survey of 2,000 parents and 2,000 children concluded that play is in danger of becoming a "lost art" for British families.

Professor Tanya Byron, the clinical psychologist and television presenter who carried out the research, said play was crucial to a child's development and advised parents to hark back to simple games from their own childhoods such as dressing up, drawing and 'let's pretend'.

She said: "There are four key ingredients to a successful playtime between parents and children: education, inspiration, integration and communication. Parents need to take a step back and think back to how their own childhood games used these four pillars and how they can implement them now."

Sibling rivalry was the biggest cause of tension in family play, according to the research commissioned by Disneyland Paris, with girls feeling it more acutely than boys. One 12 per cent of children cited siblings as their favourite playtime partners.