#childhood development

This is asking about mental/emotional development, this is not asking about the physical risks associated with co-sleeping with infants.

I wish there was a sequence of Bonnie's parents sending screenshots of the bullying to the girls' parents.

the parents snap out of their tech stupors to go yell at the girls for their behavior.

I feel like this would have added to the story in two ways:

1. It shows kids you can't get away with being mean online

2. It shows that parents are supposed to intervene in situations like this.

Which for the kids in the audience teaches them that adults are supposed to help and you can trust them.

And for the parents in the audience it reminds them that need to deal with these situations when they arise.

it is all well and good for Bonnie to no longer need those girls because she has a friend like her now.

Number 1: Treat your children like people. Not like people-in-training, people now. This doesn't mean treating them like an adult, it just means treating them as if their feelings, ideas, and choices matter. They may not have as much experience as an adult, but they deserve to be respected like one, for example, given an apology when you mess up as a parent, and an equal say in household matters. The idea is that doing this will improve a child's self-esteem, help them vocalize their needs and wants, set healthy boundaries, and express themselves, as well as teaching them to respect others through example.

Number 2: Let children learn by doing, not just by watching or listening to you. Supervise them, obviously, give them guidance if needed, and step in if you need to in order to prevent them from getting hurt, but letting them do things themselves helps in many areas. Motor function, hand-eye coordination, self-esteem, and emotional resilience, as well as helping them prepare for independent life as they get older.

Number 3: Flexibility and compromise. This is embodied in different ways and to different degrees across the three parenting styles, but the idea is still present in all three. There do need to be certain hard rules, but by displaying flexibility, you teach your child to be flexible, and how to cope with change. By showing them a willingness to compromise, you teach them what compromise is and how to compromise with their peers, helping them develop socially. By allowing them flexibility and choice specifically regarding what and when they eat, you help them develop a healthy relationship with food and body, as well as interoception, the skill of reading your body's signals and gleaning what it needs from them.

Number 4: Avoid punishments for unwise choices. If a child is about to make an unwise choice, warn them of the natural consequences, and if they don't listen, let them learn the hard way. Obviously don't do this if the consequences are severe injury, illness, or worse, but if you try to prevent your child from ever making a bad decision, you'll weaken their confidence in themselves, and their ability to think through the consequences of their decisions before they make them. They won't understand the reasons behind you not letting them watch a scary movie right before bed or eat chocolate cake and nothing else for dinner until years later, and for those couple of years, it'll be on the same level of importance as 'no elbows on the table' and 'always stand for the pledge of allegiance'.

Hello people of the internet! My name is Orch (pronounced like Orc) and I am extremely passionate about TTRPGs, specifically Dungeons and Dragons. I have been running the game for about 7 years since mid high school and been playing it since before then. It has helped me connect with some of the most important people of my life and guided me through difficult times like quarantine. In the last year, I have ran therapeutic campaigns in a formal setting alongside licensed counselors in addition to my current ongoing 3 year campaign and playing in two other campaigns with my personal group.

There is a fantastic book that, if you don't read, you should at least skim the notes of called Tabletop Role Playing Therapy by Megan Conell. Reading it was a revelation for me, putting names to concepts I had been subconsciously utilizing in my own campaigns. It also pools together some of the most recent research on the subject to describe what kinds of benefits it has. I'd also recommend looking up TikTok pages of parents running campaigns for their children and just seeing the growth it supports in action.

I want to take this post to simply state my case for TTRPGs potentially being one of the best hobbies all around. It is the most fun, creative, skill-building, socializing, bonding, confidence building activities that anyone can partake in.

Starting with some of the more clinical things, TTRPG players build reading comprehension and math skills. Having to roll dice and add values together constantly flexes those basic math muscles, making it easier to do more complicated math in day to day life. It also requires reading and interpreting rules, such as the descriptions of your characters actions or of rulings when particular scenarios arise in session. Not only that but many fantasy settings also include riddles or reading passages of lore to solve puzzles and advance through dungeons.

There is also this concept of Bleed In/Out. It sounds a bit daunting, but its actually really fascinating: Basically, it describes how behaviors from a player "Bleed In," to their characters actions, or how a character's experiences, "Bleed Out," into its players real life. Playing the role of something that you aspire to be in real life, of a fantasy of your ideal you, gives you the tangible experience needed to be like that away from the table. Say you want to be more bold since you're shy in-person, so you play a brash character that gets to take social risks with the party and NPCs that you normally wouldn't in a real-life scenario. You simulate all the same emotional reactions being confronted with arguments, debates, questions, embarrassment, and whatnot in a safe space. This acts as a form of exposure therapy that then will make being a bold person easier in your day to day life.

It's also an inherently social activity. RPGs are composed of parties of players which all have to interact with one another to gameplan how to overcome encounters together and accomplish goals in the game's setting. For demographics which may not get much socialization, playing D&D once a week could be the thing keeping them in community. In addition, creative problem solving skills develop alongside teamwork and communication skills.

If you have kids, I highly recommend getting them started in a campaign as early as possible. Though I can't think of any names, there are examples you can look up seeing how timid kids are their first time playing D&D and how much confidence and creativity they grow after playing for years.

Not only does playing an RPG have all these benefits, but so does running one. As a DM, I can attest to how many weird fields I got into to make an immersive, deep, inclusive, tasteful and interesting setting for my players to explore. You don't need to do this, as there are plenty of modules from the decades that you can use or pull from, but I always felt more confident running my own setting where I knew whatever I said was true, that I wasn't going to get anything wrong because it was my creation. I've gotten into history, civil engineering, geology, economics, political science, linguistics, culinary arts, fashion and so, so, SO much more just to make a good setting. Not only that, but you develop skills like worldbuilding, character writing, acting, improvisation, visual arts for character/creature design, maps and flags, on top of all of the other things a normal player gets as well.