RESEARCH NOTE
What Coached Play Programs Show That Game Night Does Not
Experiments show that a coached kind of parent-child play can improve the relationship. Those experiments test programs run by trained staff, mostly with young children. Nobody has run the same test on ordinary family play.
Why experiments matter here
Almost everything written about family play comes from surveys taken once. A survey can show that close families play more. It cannot show that the play made them close.
An experiment can. Researchers assign some families to a program and others to a comparison group, then compare the two. If the groups were alike at the start, a gap at the end points to the program.
Such experiments exist for play. They test something specific, and it is not game night.
What a coached program is
These are clinical or structured programs delivered by trained staff. Families are usually referred because of a child behavior problem or a relationship problem. The programs usually run for 10 to 20 coached sessions. A parent is taught a particular way of playing with the child and practices it under guidance.
The best evidence: 102 randomized trials
A 2021 review pooled 102 randomized trials in 33 countries. All tested parenting programs for children in their first three years. Many focused on "increasing early play and learning opportunities" (PLoS Medicine, 2021).
The review reports results as a standardized mean difference, or SMD. That is the gap between the program group and the comparison group, measured against the normal spread of scores. Zero means no gap.
- Parent-child interaction: SMD = 0.39 in favor of the programs.
- Attachment, the review's measure of the bond between child and caregiver: SMD = 0.29.
Two cautions come from the review itself.
- The trials disagreed with each other a great deal. The measure of that disagreement, called I squared, was 93% for parent-child interaction. The authors describe "considerable unexplained heterogeneity in the pooled effects across outcomes."
- Follow-up was short. The authors wrote that "more follow-up studies of individual trials are needed to determine whether there are sustained, longer-term effects for children and caregivers over the life course."
Play therapy with a parent in the room
Play therapy is treatment for children with a presenting problem. Two pooled analyses cover it.
The 2015 analysis. Across 52 controlled studies, the authors "estimated a statistically significant moderate treatment effect size (.47) for CCPT", their short name for child-centered play therapy (Journal of Counseling and Development, 2015). For stress in the relationship between caregiver and child, the figure was .59.
Parent involvement made a difference. Studies with full parent involvement produced .59. Studies with partial or no caregiver involvement produced .33.
The authors add their own caution: "it should be noted that the majority of studies addressing caregiver–child relationship stress fully involved caregivers as the treatment providers in the therapy process." The pool also includes studies that did not assign families at random, and the relationship measure is mostly a stress scale filled in by the parent.
The 2005 analysis. Across 93 controlled studies published from 1953 to 2000, "The overall treatment effect for play therapy interventions was 0.80 standard deviations." It also found that "using parents in play therapy produced the largest effects." We read the summary of this analysis, not the full paper (Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 2005). Many of its studies are small and old, and the results are mostly about children's symptoms.
Does it carry over to ordinary families?
This is the question that matters for the saying, and the closest evidence does not give a simple yes.
A 2019 analysis of 154 randomized trials looked at which parts of parenting programs went with better results. We read the summary, not the full paper (Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2019).
- "Several additional techniques (eg, relationship building and parental self-management) were associated with stronger effects in treatment but weaker effects in prevention."
- "No techniques were associated with stronger longer-term effects"
Treatment here means families already getting help for a problem. Prevention means ordinary-risk families. So relationship building went with stronger results where there was a problem to fix, and weaker results where there was not.
The line between the two
- What the experiments show. A specific kind of adult-child play can be taught, and it changes the relationship. The evidence is strongest for children under 3 and for families who came for help.
- What they do not show. That families who happen to play more become closer. That the gains last for years. That a board game on a weeknight does the same job as a coached session.
We also found no trial of a short daily play session on its own in ordinary families. That idea is tested only as one part of larger programs.
Experiments on ordinary family leisure
There is close to nothing. Across four leisure journals from 1990 to 2012, one article out of 181 on family leisure used an experiment (Journal of Leisure Research, 2015).
That one study had 34 families with at-risk youth, split across three recreation groups and a control group. It measured the family's confidence in its own abilities, and found that "Collective family recreation efficacy and conflict resolution efficacy increased for families in all three recreation contexts." We read the summary only (Family Relations, 2004). It did not measure closeness or whether anything lasted.
The full picture
This page covers one question. The whole verdict on the saying, with its history and every source, is in our research paper: A family that plays together stays together: is it true?