Games for common challenges sensitive children might face
Transitions
The pushing game. Have the child try to push you over. Put your arms out straight and palms together. Let the child win, act amazed at their strength, act clumbsy and pretend to fall over. The child will often collapse onto you in a big hug.
Pushing the adult over whilst laughing makes the child feel powerful and the hug at the end is body contact bringing connection.
Itchy Clothes
When itchy clothes presents a challenge use the below games.
Use the pushing game from transitions
Thumb Wars: Face each other and each holds out their left hand or right hand in a "thumbs up", and they link hands such that each player's fingers curl around the other player's fingers. Players may not use any of the fingers except the thumb to pin down their opponent's thumb. Let the child win as a power-over game, pretend your thumb has a silly voice as the child squashes it.
When the child is in good emotional balanced and not getting dressed or needing to put on clothes. Play a game where you get dressed in each others clothes. The adult can joke around that the tiny clothes are so uncomfy and the child can laugh about the giant over size clothes not fitting.
This is not part of aware parenting concepts.
Food Sensitivity
Crazy robot arm
Make sure there is safety and connection first. Let the child know that if they do not like the new food they can have anything they want from the fridge, give them the option to have the food themselves, or play a game where you are a crazy robot arm spoon feeding them. A form of regression play. When feeding them make a mess and have your arm not follow instructions throwing food around and missing their mouth.
When people are activated our taste buds change and appetite reduces. We want food to restore energy and tend to eat sweet carbs. Children will naturally eat the food their body needs and move from carbs to protein to fats to mixed.
The game is not part of aware parenting concepts.
Avoid setting limits on food, let a child lead and provide healthy options that they can choose from.
Sensory stimulation to help create a Balance of Attention
For children that struggle to connect due to extreme dissociation or hyper arousal. Use Co-operative play and have a game running in and out of the waves at the beach.
The parent could be holding the child whilst playfully running in and out of the water.
Using a paddling pool and hose pipe at home can be another way to stimulate the senses.
Note: The sea can be scary and powerful to young children, use a beach with shallow long rolling waves or playing in rock pools searching for crabs and fish can be another fun connecting game. To avoid over stimulation use a beach with a grassy park so sand and wind doesn't become too over stimulating. Playing at the local outdoor pool could be another option. Always use the relevant safety equipment like life vests.
Water that is 21c activates the divers reflex and the body's calming function. This can often help bring children out of overload. Children have a more sensitive release and can use water warmer than 21C. I've seen it work at 26C in the local public outdoor swimming pool
This is not part of aware parenting concepts.
Screens
Treat screens as co-operative play. Join them in it.
For younger children, have some body contact play to increase connection first. Pretend to be a car, have the child sit on your lap and have them drive you as you bounce around laughing together.
Then engage in using apps like Reading Egg/Mathletics
When children use them for their own entertainment. Instead of setting limits, join them in their interest and offer to join a game or have the next turn to explore their interest. That creates a natural end where after playing together you can move them on to the next activity.
If screens are being used as a control pattern, use a loving limit instead of a screen.

Restrict all alerts and notifications for gaming and social media apps. Also lower the volume when children are using devices. This limits the gamification/dopamine reward seeking design of Apps.
Using grayscale or installing apps like F.lux that lower blue light can help with eye strain and lower impact to your circadian rhythm.
General Overloaded
If you or your child are overloaded but want to try and engage for connection.
The 4 connecting play types are beneficial. Co-operation play building lego, or doing colour by numbers where you can do a regression style and go back to parallel play, helping each other with a common goal with little brain and emotional input needed.
These activities are great for just re-connecting and having a space to start empathically listening to anything your child brings up. Colour by numbers prevents any self judgement or criticism of the end product.
Note: Most children start to struggle at school after an 8 week term. By weeks 10 & 11 most friend groups are rupturing. This is due to emotional build up. Co-operative play is a great way to start bringing a child out of overload.

Outdoor free play is great for children, digging in mud and dirt is sensory stimulating. Climbing trees, rolling in grass develop vestibular and proprioceptive development & integration.
Social and Emotional Support
A young girl was showing signs of depression. At school she always plays in a dynamic of 3, she is always being pushed out of the group by a peer with a strong personality. Other times she plays hide and seek with a different group of children.
On Sports Day the girl came 2nd just at the last minute as she was over taken by another girl.
At home have a symbolic race but with a pillow fight included. One parent racing the child whilst having a pillow fight acting out the sports day race. Let the child over power the parent with the pillow at the last minute so she ends up winning, the other parent celebrates with the child for winning. Giving her the win she missed out on at school to help make her feel powerful.
The 3 person play dynamic of being powered over likely reflects a family play dynamic at home where she is a younger sibling. The parents should make time for individual Non Directive Child Centered Play with the daughter each day and continue to have lots of power reversal play to help with any powerless feelings from the peer group at school. To restore connection with the parents if she has suppressed her needs as a younger sibling, separation play would be beneficial too.
Watch for the need to release any built up emotion via loving limits or a broken cookie etc. When the cry comes the child should be supported through the release.
Using the above approach, the parent saw the child's emotions returning back in balance and depression shifting within a week.
Playground Challenges
At recess, a 6 year old girl always pretends to be a dinosaur chasing a group of boys around playing tag, she doesn't play with girls. One day, one boy grabbed and restrained her whist another hit her. In talking with the teacher the boys said they did it as the girl had made their friend feel scared.
When the girl was younger she had experienced a separation trauma making her fearful of new people. When she was in pre-school, she had told her parents that boys play too rough and girls are too confusing. At home she often likes to play dinosaur games with Dad.
Based on these concepts, the girl is trying to connect with peers in a way that makes her feel safe, powerful and in control. Tag is a separation game, wanting to be the chaser and being a dinosaur are a power-reversal within the separation game:
Power reversal and separation play are the types of play needed at home to heal her previous separation trauma.
Playing more Non Directive Child Centered Play, Symbolic Play with specific props or themes and Co-operative play would give the girl more confidence to play with girls.
To teach the girl to be less intense in her dinosaur impression, play can be used. The Father could play a similar game where the daughter is a dinosaur, whilst playing if the daughter acts too fierce the Dad can stop the game by pretending to be too scared. Repeat this each time the child's play gets too aggressive.
Challenging Behavior - Cheating
When Children cheat, they can often just not be playing the same game, if they are older it can be a feeling of powerlessness that they are trying to fill.
Whilst playing the below (non attachment play) competitive game, where you push cubes out and you have to make a row of the same dinosaur, a 6 year old started cheating.
She quickly realized if she didn't need the piece that fell out, she could put it back in the same spot blocking the other persons turn. This turned the game into a deadlock. To address it, the parent turned it into a nonsense game and started pretending the rules must be wrong, reading the booklet trying to work out why they were not winning.
They then pretend its the rule that the youngest goes first as the cause of her winning, so that rule has to change, the adult must go first. They start using her trick to start winning but not acknowledge what they were doing. The child starts to get frustrated with the rule and power reversal, so the parent suggests that they stop playing and try to push each other over and let any frustrations out then come back to the game.
They play a quick game of trying to push each other over with the palms of their hands. As she is pushing the adult, she is laughing that she will beat them and win, "who ever wins this can use the move". Then she stops. "actually, It's ok, you can win" then went back to playing normally.
Instead of shaming and criticizing her for cheating, the parent playfully turned it into a nonsense game, then the power reversal game she wanted. She learnt that we all get frustrated by cheating so it isn't a great idea to play that way with friends but this is a safe space to explore those things.
In the example the child was seeking power over the parent. The dynamic is the same in school. If a child cheats, explore why are they feeling powerless in that class.
Note: The above game could be changed into a co-operative game but changing the rules so that you have to help each other to make rows of the same dinosaur picture without telling each other what dinosaur you are trying to create do on each row.
Separation Trauma & Anxiety
Hide and seek and other separation games like chasing are good for separation trauma and anxiety.
Play hide and seek in 1 room. Then expand to larger locations or multiple rooms as the child's confidence grows. If the child crys, stop hiding and sit with the child to support them through the emotion that has been triggered. When they are ready ask if they would like to continue playing.
If there has been a retraumatization, playing out the trauma again doesn't always work. In those instances, once the trauma has been played out for the original trauma, the secondary trauma has to be processed by talking about it or safe exposure and triggering a crying response until all emotion has been released. This might have to happen over several weeks with lots and lots of tears.
If a child has separation anxiety and is starting school. The parent and child could be invited to meet the teacher before school term starts and have a game of hide and seek in the playground or classroom to help reduce that anxiety.
Additional Parenting Resources
Also available in Chinese
Aletha's books all include studies and references supporting the concepts.
Good for teaching playground skills.
Nic Wilson an Awp Instructor has a free Ebook with lots of attachment play games to get people started.
Joss Goulden also has a free ebook that she can email you.
Good for nightly chats.