The Brain-Changing Power of 5 Minutes of Play
Play isn’t just passing time. When children play, they’re bathing in nourishing neurochemicals, wiring neural pathways, and developing the emotional, social, and cognitive muscles they’ll need for a lifetime.
What Play Does for the Brain
1. Play Builds Connection
When we join our children in play, oxytocin flows. It fosters trust, attachment, and emotional safety. Kids feel deeply seen, which lays the foundation for cooperation, learning, and secure relationships.
Types of play which build connection: reading together, pretend play with eye contact and closeness, roughhousing.
2. Play Supports Co-Regulation
Shared laughter and movement release endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine, calming the nervous system. Even wild play teaches kids how to toggle between excitement and calm, a skill for life.
Types of play to support co-regulation: dance parties, silly songs, chase or wrestling games.
3. Play Fuels Learning and Neural Growth
Play activates the prefrontal cortex, the “upstairs brain” as Dan Siegel calls it, which powers executive function: planning, problem-solving, impulse control.
Types of play to promote prefrontal cortex growth: Legos or blocks, puzzles, treasure hunts, board games.
4. Play Helps Process Difficult Experiences
Children often replay stressful events through symbolic play, which lowers cortisol and restores a sense of safety. These types of play are powerfully therapeutic, stitching a coherent narrative and releasing stuck trauma.
Types of therapeutic play: reenacting doctor visits, using dolls/figures for storytelling, drawing about hard experiences, writing a story together.
5. Play Sparks Creativity and Innovation
Imaginative play lights up the brain’s “curiosity network,” boosting exploration and flexible thinking.
Types of play to ignite creativity: pretend games, storytelling, arts and crafts, unstructured make-believe.
6. Child-Led Play Is the Gold Standard
All benefits are magnified when kids lead. Following their imagination says: Your world matters. Your voice matters.
Try this: Just 5 minutes a day.
- Get on the floor.
- Follow their lead without corrections or agenda.
- Offer your undivided presence.
It sounds simple. But it’s radically powerful.
Play Grows the Brain—and the Relationship
Five minutes of intentional play a day can transform your family life: fewer power struggles, deeper connection, better sleep, greater resilience.
Not because you deliberately taught your child something.
But because you met them where they already are:
In their language.
In their rhythm.
In their world.
I’d love to hear – what’s your child’s favorite way to play right now? Just hit reply and share. I always love gathering new ideas from this community.