Skill Building Through Online Gaming

Over 90% of children age 2-17 play video games. When kids are asked why they play video games, more than half of them give reasons such as “to relax, to learn new things, and to create their own world.” In a study conducted by Cheryl Olson, the top reasons children gave for playing is that games are “fun, exciting, and have the challenge to figure things out.” Olson also found that 45% of boys and 29% of girls said they play video games “to get my anger out.” Children also reported that they play video games to help them relieve stress. Regardless over the reason, it is clear that nearly all children enjoy video games, so why not meet them where they are and help them build crucial skills in a structure and safe way while having fun?!

Dr. Skaggs (aka Dr. Khan)helps children and caregivers identify problems that can lead to inappropriate behaviors and collaborate with them in order to solve these problems. Rather than focusing on the Childs challenging behaviors, CPS helps kids and caregivers solve the problems that are causing those behaviors. The problem solving is collaborative (not unilateral) and proactive (not reactive). Research has shown that the model is effective not only at solving problems and improving behavior but also at enhancing skills.

Social-emotional skills are essential for connecting with others! They help us manage our emotions, build healthy relationships, and feel empathy. Studies show that playing video games encourages critical thinking, improves motor skills and promotes key social skills like leadership and team building.

Dr. Khan helps children build social skills that will last them for life while also having the opportunity to make authentic relationships! Children will learn valuable social skills like how to:

• Make friends and keep friendships
• Gain confidence
• Resolve conflicts
• Manage stress and anxiety
• Learn social norms
• Make appropriate decisions
• Resist negative social pressure
• Learn strengths and weaknesses
• Gain awareness of what others are feeling
• Build leadership abilities
• Respectfully disagree
• Use appropriate language

If you ask your child to sit down and do homework, what happens? Many children will complain, get upset or even throw tantrums. Others might start but then stew in frustration, especially if they have poor academic skills. But there are ways to have fun and build academic skills at the same time, through professionally facilitated online gaming! Children love building their math, reading, writing, STEM skills, social studies and more while they work through adventures with their peers.

Dr. Khan facilitates groups of children through numerous gaming scenarios through a strategic curriculum that is embedded with connections to real world academic skills tailored to each Childs needs.

Tomorrow’s business landscape could well be alien territory for today’s business leaders. At many companies, important decision making will be distributed throughout the organization to enable people to respond rapidly to change. A lot of work will be done by global teams—partly composed of people from outside the institution, over whom a leader has no formal authority—that are assembled for a single project and then disbanded. Collaboration within these geographically diverse groups will, by necessity, occur mainly through online environments, rather than face-to-face interaction.

Online gaming offers a sneak preview of tomorrow’s business world. In broad terms, that environment can be expected to feature the fluid workforces, the self-organized and collaborative work activities, and the decentralized, nonhierarchical leadership that typify games.

Dr. Khan offers an opportunity to help children develop not only these more recently identified leadership skills but also many present-day leadership qualities such as:

• Active listening.
• Empathy.
• The ability to share clear messages and make complex ideas easy to understand for everyone.
• Strategic thinking skills.
• Creativity.
• The ability to inspire and convince others.
• Flexibility.