Creative play with kids is the answer every dad of four boys — ages nine down to two, growing up here in Battambang, Cambodia — eventually gets asked about: what do you actually do with them all day? The honest answer is that most of it isn’t complicated. It’s not curated activities off a Pinterest board. It’s a countdown, a rubber ball, a pile of blocks, and me pretending to lose at video games. The equipment barely matters. What matters is that whatever we’re doing gets turned into a challenge, a rule, a version of the game nobody else plays quite the way we do.
Games That Need Nothing But Us
Some of our best games use zero equipment. Hide and seek was the starting point, but it evolved into something the boys love a lot more: the monster hunt. I do a countdown, they scatter and hide wherever they can find, and the second the countdown hits zero, it’s my job to become the monster. The better the acting, the bigger the fun — it’s not really about finding them fast, it’s about making the hunt feel real.
The other one is red light, green light. Most people know it now from Squid Game, but it’s actually a traditional Korean game I grew up with long before Netflix got involved. Our boys love the thrill of it — the stopping, the freezing, the risk of getting caught mid-step.
Games That Need One Ball
A single soft rubber ball covers a surprising amount of ground in our living room. We play dodgeball with it, monkey in the middle, and a version of squash where we bounce it off the wall back and forth. It has to be the soft rubber kind — anything harder and this list gets a lot shorter, given the furniture.
The Number Game With the Blocks
Our newest favorite uses number-shaped blocks. We pick a target number — say, 34 — and each boy has to build a tower using number blocks that add up to exactly that. It’s part math, part creativity, part figuring out how to stack four blocks so the tower doesn’t fall over before you get to the total. Even I find it genuinely challenging, and I’m not the one learning addition for the first time.
Where Screens Fit In
We’re not a no-screens-ever house when it comes to play, but video game time still runs through the same Gatekeeper System we use for screens generally — it’s earned, not automatic. When it’s game time, I join in and make it a 2v2 — Number Four isn’t old enough to really play yet, so it’s usually me and one of the older three against the other two. Gang Beasts is a current favorite: a ragdoll physics game that’s either co-op or a free-for-all where the goal is throwing each other off a building, and it’s exactly as stupid and hilarious as it sounds. We also play a game called Boomerang, where you pick an item — a fruit, a vegetable, coffee, hot sauce — and throw boomerangs at each other to score. Simple rules, but control is harder than it looks. Mario Kart World and Mario Party are both in rotation, and Just Dance is on the wish list for whenever we can get our hands on it.
The Age Gap Isn’t the Problem You Think It Is
People assume a two-year-old and a nine-year-old can’t really play the same game. Boys are boys. If something is interesting, the age gap stops mattering — Number Four needs help with the math on the block towers, but he’s in there building right alongside his brothers. It’s the same kid who won’t sit still through a meal, and somehow he’ll sit and stack blocks for twenty minutes straight if the challenge is right. The trick, if there is one, is making it a challenge. The moment a game feels like a test of skill or cleverness, all four of them are in, regardless of age.
Who Starts the Game
I’m usually not the one calling for playtime. It’s Number Two or Number Three who starts it, or the boys just start playing on their own and pull me in because, according to them, it’s more fun with Dad in it. That might have something to do with the fact that I try very hard to lose “unintentionally.” When things get genuinely tense, though, I take the win.
Where Mom Fits In
For anything that’s sit-down and brain-exercise — the block challenges, that kind of thing — my wife leads the way. Anything more physical, the running-around, rough-housing kind of play, that’s mostly a dad thing in our house.
The Game They Invented Themselves
Traditional games don’t stay traditional for long around here. The boys added a new move to Rock, Paper, Scissors: Bomb. Bomb beats everything. It’s not fair, and it’s not supposed to be — it has to be played at random, and whoever draws Bomb first wins, no questions asked, just some screaming afterward. It gets chaotic, but it’s the same kind of chaos we handle without raising our voices. The Discipline System doesn’t clock out just because we’re playing a game.
Blocks Over Robots
If I had to give one piece of toy advice, it’s this: skip the robots unless your kid has a real passion for them, and buy blocks instead. Wood blocks, magnetic blocks, Duplo — whichever kind, they last for years and the challenges you can build around them are basically infinite. Kids today love Roblox and Minecraft, and blocks scratch that same itch for creativity and problem-solving, just in your living room instead of on a screen.
Eventually, if you can manage it, get Legos — not the licensed sets, the classic ones, so the boys can build their own blueprint instead of following someone else’s. Fair warning: Legos aren’t what they used to be. When I was a kid, you could buy a bucket of them for a few dollars. Now the pricing feels closer to gold, and I’m not exaggerating much. We’ve found decent deals on the used market in Korea, but even those run over $100 for 5 kilograms. With four boys, I’d guess we need at least 15 kilograms of pieces to keep their creativity satisfied — and once something’s built, they won’t want you taking it apart for something new. But things need a reset sometimes, whether they like it or not.
Back when I was a kid, blocks were a luxury. Boredom forced us to get creative with sticks and rocks instead — I played GI Joe with pebbles, and it was still fun.
What Creative Play With Kids Is Really About
I grew up with a dad who invested real time in us — wrestling with us, getting on the floor, being present. That was rare in the early ’90s. Most dads back then were upright and responsible, but busy, checked out the moment they got home. Mine wasn’t like that. He went the extra mile for me and my two brothers, and growing up knowing what it felt like to have a dad who actually wanted to play with us shaped something in all three of us.
My dad was mature, a grown-up in every sense, but loving in a way that made us want to be around him. I miss those days. That experience is exactly why I gladly invest in playing, roughhousing, and getting down on the floor with my own four boys. It’s part of the same project as everything else in this house — raising boys who’ll grow into respected, respectable men — this just happens to be the part that’s the most fun. It’s memories being built now that I hope will give them strength later, whenever they need it.
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