if you have boys, what do they play together?

[beclev24]

If you have more than one boy, do they play together and if so, what kinds of things do they play? Eg sports/ board games/ imagination games of pretend etc etc

I have 3 DS's ages 8, 5 and 10 months All my friends with girls of similar ages (at least of the older two) say that their girls play together for long stretches, often in pretend kinds of games- eg playing school/ shop/ princesses/ families etc etc. My boys don't play like this at all, or very rarely, and only if I play with them. Do your boys play imagination type games? How can I encourage this kind of play? These are some of my happiest childhood memories....

Ahh now you’re playing it down. Some people said ‘play wrestling’, others said ‘beating the living shit out of each other’. Was that for comedic effect?

Who's playing it down?

And yes, I should imagine that it is for comic effect as if the DC were actually "beating the living shit out of each other" then I doubt the poster would be admitting that on this type of thread and that Social Services or the police would probably be involved somewhere along the line.

We used to get ours in a wrestling hold and they had to fight to get out (making it just difficult enough) and they thought it was hilarious. They had to escape in order to go to bed. They loved it. they were also allowed to wrestle about on our large sheepskin rug but only when they were all clean from the bath, they thought it was a treat :)

One of my boys is incredibly into imaginative games, more so than most children of either sex I suspect, and plays them with specific like minded friends of his and alone for hours on end, and with his sister too though shes a teen and that's a bit more like playing with a good babysitter I suspect. My other son is more sports, computer games and light sabre battles, and though he's a thinker and sometimes an over thinker he's not especially imaginative in a play related way.

The youngest built a house and car out of cardboard boxes the other day with his like minded friend. He and less imaginative play oriented brother have been sporadically playing a car their based game but it tends to start with mutual laughter and end in arguments, predictably. A lot of their play involves racing about and me telling them to go outside... However neither are like that separately or with their own friends. One automatically goes outside to play football, the other plays StarWars or Ninja Games (which are imaginative even if not necessarily a mother's first choice) or bafflingly complicated imaginary scenarios alone or with friends, or builds dens or draws out imaginary comic strip type series of pictures. He also likes imaginative play with Lego figures - not so interested in building with Lego though he'll competently build a new kit he'll never want to build anything twice. He used to love Playmobil but somehow his peers see that as babyish but the same type of play with Lego figures as fine.

When they were all younger all 3 kids would play "small world" games together using Playmobil, Lego, books, brio train track, matchbox cars, furniture, plastic boxes... They'd take over the whole living room and build a mix and match civilisation and keep an imaginative game going all day long over 3 or 4 days before losing interest and abandoning it and being made to grudgingly tidy up. That was at its peak when they were around 4, 7 and 9. One girl, two boys.

Mine are 4 and 5.
They play
Lego
Superheroes
Police
Puppies
Everything really they are like two peas in a pod. 5 year old has just started in reception and they throw their arms round each other when i pick him up.
Ds2 is now desperate to start school in September so he can be with him again.
I hope it lasts!

shecamefromgreece Mine are 18 and 17 now and still get on really really well. In my minds eye I see them standing for each other at their weddings (and brings a tear to my eye! :o bet they don't even get married! )

DS1 has very bad anxiety and selective mutism and he needed to do a presentation to an "audience" as part of his exams and as you can imagine he was in bits about it. The teacher said that the audience didn't need to be the whole class - she would pass him with 2 people there, she said she's get another teacher that DS knows or did he have anyone he would trust to do it. He asked his brother. I didn't even know about it until afterwards and the teacher spoke to me about it saying that she was almost in tears watching him doing it with his younger brother willing him on. I was so proud. DS1 was able to return the favour when DS2 got caught up in something accidentally and was in trouble at school (he was with some boys who were vaping and the fire alarm went off). This time he was in tears (all 6'2 of him) and he sought out his big brother who told him not to worry, and that it would all be okay, he promised it would. It was okay, of course it was, but problems seem so huge to them at that age and he'd never been in trouble before, never so much as lost time on golden time in primary. The deputy head who had called me about it said it was clear that DS2 had learned his lesson and wasn't proposing any punishment at all. Dh and I said the biggest lesson he needed to learn was how to deal with peer pressure.

This is despite them "beating the shit out of each other" on a daily basis!

waxon that story about the speech brought a tear to my eye. What lovely boys they sound like

Also so many of the stories on here make it sound like the imagination thing is not gender related. Come to think of it DS1 does play like this with his friends at school (lots of spies/ astronauts/scientists etc) and plays imaginary scenarios with LEGO figures etc but never with his brother. I hope that changes as they get older.

Love the sound of the imaginary worlds in the living room!

Mine are four and seven. They are loud. Realllly loud.

All the time..

I don’t understand the posters saying “they play with Brio, Lego etc but don’t play imaginative ganes”.

How are Brio and Lego (the lattter particularly) not imaginative??

My two play for hours together - mainly Lego - and always have done.

I have two boys (11 and 4) and a girl (8). The youngest boy plays a lot of imaginative games and roleplay either alone, with friends his age or dd, but with ds1 they mainly play football, rugby, wrestling.

My 2 boys are 8 and 5 and spend hours every day playing imaginary world games with mainly lego, but also any other toys round the house. This also often escalates into fights over whose minifgure is whose which gets physical.

stitching I guess by imaginative play I and many people mean “let’s pretend to be...x” type games or acting out small world scenes in similar way rather than building structures. But agree LEGO can pe played with in imaginative ways of course

I have a b/g/b/g combo. DC 3 is my most imaginative by far and a "player". The other three are all doers although dc3 and 4 will play together. The boys will start off playing together but it will always end in tears. Ds1 is very physical, he doesn't seem to be able to play other kinds of games and as he is 5 years older than ds2 he always dominates.

StitchingMoss Lego play can be very imaginative indeed or totally devoid of imagination (if simply following instructions and not even imagining the finished product or a team of lego people doing the construction or whatever internally while doing so).