Board games offer many benefits, especially to people with ADHD. By intrinsically teaching the child life skills in a fun way, games bring enjoyment and a learning opportunity.
Learn Problem-Solving Skills
Games that balance luck and strategy will help children with ADSD develop problem-solving skills by simulating real-life situations and understanding that sometimes we get lucky, and sometimes we have unexpected setbacks.
Giving children strategies to think up that will help them overcome game setbacks and still succeed helps them develop skills to conquer real-life difficulties.
Recommended Problem-Solving Games:
- Risk
- Settlers of Catan + expansions
- Livingstone (suitable for younger kids, too)
Develop ADHD Children’s Brains
The human brain is forever learning, making new connections, and growing.
Younger children’s brains develop when they play games that challenge them. Games that require older kids and teenagers to be strategic and solve problems help develop the frontal lobes of the brain, which are responsible for executive function skills like planning, organizing, and making good decisions.
Recommended Games To Help Brain Development:
Strategy games, for example, Risk or Settlers
Lengthen Attention Span
Aside from its social benefits, learning to sit and wait your turn can lengthen a child’s attention span. Kids learn that while there may be parts of the game they find boring, the boredom is short-lived, and they are able to stay in the game as they wait their turn.
However, it is important to ensure there are no distractions, and children with ADHD should not have the opportunity to look at their phones or turn on the TV.
Recommended Games For Lengthening Attention Span:
Any game in which players have to wait their turn, including Chinese checkers or Monopoly.
Multiplayer Games Teach Social Skills
Social skills- sometimes difficult to learn for children with ADHD, can be learned when children are in a group setting.
Teachers who use games in the classroom can teach reading or math while strengthening peer relationships within the class at the same time. Games can help children with ADHD to:
- Participate in teamwork
- Waiting their turn
- Being a good loser
- Learn that it’s not always about me, me, me.
Recommended Games That Teach Social Skills In The First Few Grades At School:
- Pictionary
- Blokus with two or four players
- Family Feud- by writing your own questions about science or history
Teach Children With ADHD To Control Their Emotions
Board games can be a good exercise for children with ADHD to harness the emotions evoked by games.
It’s generally easier to deal with negative emotions brought on by losing or doing badly in a game than with negative emotions sparked by real-life incidents such as not being invited to a birthday party or being called names at school.
Children with ADHD can learn to handle negative emotions during a game when there isn’t as much at stake. This helps them develop the skills to handle more complex problems like feeling ostracised.
Positive peer pressure during a game also gives children guidance on where the boundaries are.
Smaller children and those with a short temper often bang on the table or push the game to destroy everyone’s chances of winning when things don’t go well for them. Kids can also learn through games that yelling at the winning team doesn’t improve their chance of success, and this is a valuable life skill.
Recommended Games To Help Control Emotions:
- Risk
- Settlers of Catan + expansions
- Carcassonne
You can also check out our card game recommandations here.
