At your house, is there a day that goes by without the little ones playing hide and seek in some way, shape, or form? Hide and seek might look like a game but there are some serious reasons why kids love to play; it helps kids with early learning and especially kindergarten readiness.
One of the big challenges for many kids is to separate from parents and caregivers. For some children, this isn’t an issue at all, but for others it’s a very big deal. Did you know that playing hide and seek can help?
Hide and seek is really a game about relationships. When kids go off to hide, they are going off on their own. They pick the hiding place and sometimes initiate the game without any prompting by parents and other caregivers. Often, they will announce it though by calling out,”I’m hiding, come find me,” just in case we didn’t get the message. In order to do this, they need to trust that we will look for them and will indeed come find them. Kids will check this over and over. None of us ever tires of being found or discovered or reunited.
There is also an element of control or power. So much of their lives, kids have to follow along with the adult timetables. Meals come at certain time, hungry or not. Kids can’t even sleep when they want, sometimes we need them to get up and get ready to go. By hiding, kids are asserting their control of a situation for a little while, with the security of the knowledge that the grownups will find them. In a sense, hiding Easter eggs is the same thing on a community and tradition scale.
No wonder, kids love to play this game, and variations of it, like hiding one shoe, or worse, the keys. Do you have a hide and seek story to share?