Learning to Take Turns: What Family Games Teach Children Aged 3 to 6

Japan’s national curriculum guidelines for kindergartens, issued in 2017, include this aim under human relationships: while enjoying life with friends, children notice why rules matter and try to keep them. The same guidelines list “the beginnings of morality and a sense of rules” among the qualities they hope to see by the end of early childhood, and describe children coming to understand why rules are needed, “regulating their own feelings” and working things out with friends as they make and keep rules.

Taking turns is one of the first rules a child meets. There are turns on the slide, on the swings, and in a family board game. And for a three- or four-year-old, waiting until their turn comes is harder than it looks. In this post I go over what is known about waiting, then write about ways to practice taking turns in family games.

Why waiting is hard

While waiting for a turn, a child has to hold back the urge to roll the dice right now, and keep in mind that their turn is coming. Psychologists call this ability to adjust your feelings and actions to a goal “self-regulation”.

The best known research on waiting is Walter Mischel’s “marshmallow test”, a set of experiments in which children choose between eating a treat now or waiting to get a second one. A study useful for parents is a 1972 study by Mischel, Ebbe Ebbesen and Antonette Raskoff Zeiss. Preschoolers waited longer when they played with a toy or thought about fun things than when they thought about the reward. In other words, the ability to wait is not a fixed amount inside the child. It changes with how they wait.

The marshmallow test is also known for findings that children who waited longer did better later on. But in a 2018 replication by Tyler Watts and colleagues, the link between waiting time at age 4 and achievement at age 15 was about half the size reported in the original studies. Once family background, early cognitive ability and the home environment were taken into account, it shrank by about two thirds more. One reading of this is that there is no need to worry too much about a four-year-old who cannot wait.

Trying to build self-regulation through play

Some researchers have tried to build self-regulation through games. In a 2011 study by Shauna Tominey and Megan McClelland, preschoolers played games such as “Red Light, Purple Light” during circle time. Children move or stop according to colored signals, and as they get used to it, the meanings of the signals are switched and children take turns leading. According to a 2019 report, in the 2011 study the children who started with low self-regulation scores improved more if they played the games.

In that 2019 study, though, which tried the same games with 157 preschoolers from low-income families, there was a difference in math gains, but the difference in self-regulation gains was not statistically significant. It was a short program: eight weeks, twice a week, 15 to 20 minutes a session. The results are not yet strong enough to say that games build self-regulation.

On the other hand, it is well established that turn-based games can be a place for other learning. In a 2008 study by Robert Siegler and Geetha Ramani, children played a board game with the numbers 1 to 10 in a straight line, taking turns with an adult to spin a spinner. Each time they moved, the children said the numbers on the squares out loud. After just four 15-minute sessions, their ability to estimate the size of numbers improved. I wrote about the number side in Saying Numbers Is Not Understanding Them, so here I only note that the child and the adult took turns.

Keep the wait short

In practicing taking turns, it helps to keep the wait short at first.

Fewer players. With four players, a child waits through three other turns before their own. For a three-year-old, one way to start is with just the child and one adult, so there is only one turn to wait through. As they get used to it, add a third player, then a fourth.

Short turns. Start with games where a turn is quick, such as rolling the dice and moving. When an adult thinks for a long time or explains rules in the middle of a turn, the child’s wait gets longer.

Make the order visible. Say the order out loud by name: “Next is you, then Mom.” Passing the dice hand to hand around the table, or tracing name cards laid out in order, lets the child see the order in the movement of things.

Give them a job while they wait. As in Mischel’s study, doing something makes waiting easier than sitting still. Count another player’s moves together, or be the one who hands the dice to the next person. Watching other people’s turns then becomes part of the game.

Start with cooperation. When there is a winner and a loser, every turn that is not yours looks like time when someone else gets ahead. In a game where the family works toward one goal together, other people’s turns are your turns too. I wrote about playing Concentration cooperatively in When Can Kids Play Memory Games?

What to say when they can’t wait

One approach is to put the turn back rather than scold.

Say it before you start. Agree beforehand: “We only roll the dice on our own turn.” It is easier to keep a rule you knew about than one you are reminded of halfway through.

If they grab, gently put it back. If the child takes the dice on someone else’s turn, say “It’s Dad’s turn now. You’re next” and put the dice back. Using the same words each time gets through better than a long explanation.

When they wait, say so specifically. Put the waiting itself into words: “You waited until Mom was done.” Praise the waiting rather than the winning.

Let them see you wait. Adults can say out loud, “It’s your turn next, so I’ll wait.” Showing that turns are a rule for grown-ups too sets an example.

Stop on hard days. Waiting is even harder when a child is sleepy or tired. On a day when they cannot wait however many times you remind them, it is fine to call it a day. How long preschoolers can focus is covered in How Long Can Preschoolers Focus?

Getting started by age

Research does not tell us what a child can do at which age, so these are only rough guides.

Around 3. Start with the child and one adult, in games that take a few minutes. Games where a turn ends quickly, like rolling a die or turning over one card, work well. If they do not keep to the order, a game that ends happily is enough.

Around 4. Try playing with three. Giving the child a job on other players’ turns, like counting their moves together, makes the wait feel shorter.

Around 5 to 6. More often the whole family can play. Following the guidelines’ idea of children making rules, you might decide house rules together, such as “roll a double and go again”. A rule a child helped make is one they are more inclined to keep.

How to handle a child who cries after losing is a long topic, so I leave it out here.

What BrainDojo Kids offers

BrainDojo Kids is an iPhone and iPad app for children aged 3 to 6 that I make. In Sugoroku Together, the family board game, you choose 2, 3 or 4 players and a game length of 4, 6 or 8 turns. The “fewer players” and “keep it short” ideas above can be set before you start. The screen shows whose turn it is by name, such as “Mia’s turn”.

Some squares on the board lead to mini games for everyone. Two of them are about taking turns.

Pair Memory Battle is Concentration: players take turns turning over two cards to find matching pictures, and a player who finds a pair goes again. The instructions end with “Wait for your turn”.

In Team Calligraphy, players switch after every single stroke and write one character together. The brush takes on each writer’s color, so the finished character mixes everyone’s colors. It is cooperative, and each turn is just one stroke, so it is a good way in for practicing turns.

There are also cooperative games where everyone remembers or counts together, and face-to-face battles where two players sit across the tablet from each other and solve the same problem at the same time. Since the battles are played at the same time, there is no waiting. On days when waiting is still too hard, those can be a place to start.

Sugoroku Together is free to play, as are the three daily games in Today’s Training and the four Recommended games. A Premium subscription (monthly or yearly) opens all courses and games. In the parent settings there is a daily time limit, on by default at 10 minutes. There are no ads and no account to create. House rules for tablet use are in Tablet Rules for Preschoolers, and the first session is covered in Getting Started with BrainDojo Kids.