Nonverbal Communication Games Played as a Kid

While thinking about what I wanted to blog about for the week, I was babysitting. Since it was cold this afternoon, the kids on the street all managed to come over to the house of the child I am babysit for. There were about 6 kids- and one of them, who was about 9 years old, decided to teach all of the younger kids how to play charades. Which made me think, when we are younger, we play a few games that really do rely solely on nonverbal communication in order to be played correctly.

The first game I will talk about is charades. In order to play charades, all of the players write down words, phrases, activities, etc. that they will want their opponents to write down and act out. Then, all of those words, phrases, activities, etc. are all folded up and placed into a bowl for all of the other members to pick out and act out to the group. The one catch to the game is that there is no talking allowed. The guessers must rely on the actor's nonverbal communication skills in order to get their message across using nonverbal cues. The actor may do facial expressions, hand gestures, or even use objects in certain ways to help out the guessers, but no talking is allowed.

A second game that I personally remember playing in elementary school is Follow the Leader. In order to play Follow the Leader, one person is appointed to be the leader. Everyone else must follow that person around and do exactly what the leader does, and go exactly where the leader goes. At any given time, the leader is allowed to non-verbally transfer their powers to another player who had been a follower. The communication of the transferring of powers must be done without uttering a word, meaning that nonverbal communication plays a huge role in this game- from the changing of the leader, to the point of the game to follow whatever nonverbal cues the leader is doing.

These are just two of many games people play at even a young age using just nonverbal communication. When I made the connection, I did find it very interesting to think about how we are using nonverbal communication tactics even in games we play as young children.