Roughhousing Isn’t Just Fun—Here’s How It Can Benefit Parents and Kids

I’m a mom of three boys, so roughhousing is a part of my family’s everyday life. Whether it’s pillow fights or arm-wrestling, my boys (including my husband!) are more often than not engaging in some sort of rough-and-tumble play.

Turns out, there are many benefits to this type of energetic physical activity—for kids (boys and girls, of course!). Here’s what you need to know about roughhousing with your toddler—including how to play it safe while having lots of fun.

Key Takeaways

• Roughhousing meaning: Roughhousing is a term that can apply to any type of physical, playful interaction between kids or a parent and child. This includes playing “airplane,” wrestling, chasing each other around and more.
• Benefits of rough-and-tumble play include parent-child bonding, better emotional regulation and enhanced motor skills and body awareness.
• Because roughhousing comes with a risk of injury, it’s important to follow some ground rules, like establishing consent and playing in a safe space. It’s also important to stop when someone says “stop.”

What Is Considered Roughhousing?

Roughhousing is an umbrella term that includes any type of energetic physical play. “Roughhousing is a special type of play that combines physicality, spontaneity, connection and joy,” explains Dr. Lawrence J. Cohen, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in children’s play and author of Playful Parenting. “Good roughhousing is more like dancing than fighting—a physical activity that requires tuning into one another.”

Roughhousing is lively, rather than aggressive. “I think of roughhousing as playful physical interaction that both the parent and child are enjoying and can stop at any time,” says Dr. Wendy Hunter, MD, FAAP, a pediatrician at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego and host of the podcast The Pediatrician Next Door. “The key word is playful. There should be laughter, smiles and clear signs that everyone’s having fun.”

Roughhousing can “look a thousand different ways,” Dr. Cohen points out. Some common forms of roughhousing include rolling on the floor, tossing in the air, wrestling, pillow fights, tickling and chasing. How you roughhouse with your kids, and how they roughhouse with each other, can evolve over time. “For older infants and toddlers, it might be bouncing, lifting, flying in your arms or a playful round of tickling,” says Dr. Ari Brown, MD, a Texas-based pediatrician and author of Toddler 411. “For preschoolers, it might be playing chase, pillow fights, snowball fights or pretend wrestling.”

My earliest memories of roughhousing with my boys are playing “airplane”—laying on my back with my knees bent, placing their chest on my shins and lifting them into the air to “fly”—and bouncing them on my stomach for a “horsey ride.” But as they got older (and too heavy for me to lift!), the boys started wrestling with each other and my husband. The common denominator? It’s physical and fun.

What Are the Benefits of Roughhousing With Your Toddler?

There are both emotional and physical benefits to rough-and-tumble play, according to experts. They include:

• Parent-child bonding. “There’s something about laughing together while rolling around on the floor that strengthens the parent-child bond,” says Dr. Hunter. “Years from now, your child won’t remember the toy you bought them. But they may remember laughing so hard during a wrestling match that they couldn’t catch their breath.” Research shows that roughhousing with your child produces equal, if not higher, levels of the hormone oxytocin than cuddling side-by-side—resulting in a strong emotional bond. “The biggest benefit by far is joy,” Dr. Cohen emphasizes.
• Social awareness and emotional regulation. “Children learn to regulate their bodies and emotions while they’re excited,” Dr. Hunter explains. “The child learns that you can be energetic and excited without becoming aggressive.” Roughhousing also lets kids practice “reading facial expressions, taking turns, negotiating limits and controlling their own strength,” she adds.
• Confidence-building. Roughhousing can help build confidence as kids test their physical limits. Kate C., a mom of two in New York City, says she witnessed this firsthand with her children. “They’re some of the first kids to try physically demanding activities like jumping off a higher diving board, waterskiing and rock climbing,” she says. “They’re confident in their physical abilities, and I think this is partly because they’re given the space at home to be so physically playful, silly and free.”
• Physical skills. Roughhousing can help foster “motor skills, body awareness, spatial awareness, balance, coordination and positive sensory stimulation through touch and movement,” says Dr. Brown.
• Better sleep. Some experts say that rough-and-tumble play before bedtime may help your child regulate their nervous system and feel more ready to snooze. “One of the most productive pre-nighttime activities for children is when they invert their bodies—hanging upside-down, jumping into a stack of pillows or being swung by a parent. When their heads drop below their hearts, it activates their parasympathetic nervous system, aka their rest-and-digest state,” Dr. Sarah Bren, PhD, a clinical psychologist and mom of two, writes on Instagram.⁠ That said, all kids are different—if yours has a hard time winding down post-play, follow their cues.

What Are the Risks of Roughhousing With Your Toddler?

The biggest risk of roughhousing is, of course, injury, particularly if your child “gets too carried away or silly during the fun,” Dr. Brown warns. When a kid gets overstimulated, they can lose the ability to regulate themselves—and can accidentally hurt themselves or anyone they’re playing with.

Parents can also unintentionally cause “ouch” situations. “The most common injury I see is when a parent holds a child by one or both arms and swings them, or the child pulls away while their wrist is being held,” says Dr. Hunter. “This is how a ‘nursemaid’s elbow’ or elbow dislocation can easily happen.”

But don’t let these risks scare you off. Instead, Dr. Cohen encourages parents to practice common sense when roughhousing. “Occasional bumps and scrapes are an inevitable—I would also say a beneficial—side effect of a happy childhood,” he says. “If we protect too much, we inhibit the creative life force and dampen the child’s spirit.”

Tips for Safe Roughhousing

Here are some tips for keeping roughhousing enjoyable and safe from experts and real parents:

• Ask first, play second. Model asking your children if they want to roughhouse (i.e. “Do you want to have a tickle fight?”). “It’s important to be clear that these games are fine with a willing participant,” Dr. Brown says. “Your child [also] needs to ask permission with other playmates before engaging in this play. Not every caregiver or friend wants to play this way.” This is important when a younger sibling enters the chat. “It’s great to teach that a ‘no’ doesn’t have to be a verbal ‘no’ from a sibling’s mouth,” Chandler A. says. “A child can advocate for their own body boundaries with a fuss or a cry. A parent can help the older child understand … by saying things like, ‘Do you hear him crying? Do we think he likes it when we play with him like that? We can play these games instead.’”
• Set up ground rules. Some common rules include no hitting faces or open-handed hitting, no kicking, no biting, no grabbing the neck and no hairpulling. The most important rule of all? “If we cannot follow these rules, we cannot participate,” shares parent Chandler A.
• Create a safe space for roughhousing. “Adjust your environment! We had to change everything in our home to support the constant gross motor movement,” Chandler A. says. For her family, this meant creating a “romp room”—but it can be as simple as laying down pillows to create a soft landing space for jumping or removing any furniture with sharp edges, mirrors or objects that could get knocked over.
• Tune into your child. It’s important to strike a balance between overseeing roughhousing and not helicoptering. “This requires being close by, ready to spot them but not hovering too much,” Dr. Cohen explains. “‘Be careful, be careful!’ actually lowers safety, because it takes away from children’s own capacity to assess risk.”
• Stop always means stop. “If someone says ‘stop,’ the game stops immediately,” Dr. Hunter says. “That goes for roughhousing with adults or other children.” And, again, nonverbal cues also need to be respected.

How to Calm Things Down

Having an exit strategy is helpful. It’s also good for kids’ development to learn how to move between activities. “One of the hidden benefits of roughhousing is that children practice moving from a high-energy emotional state back to calm,” Dr. Hunter says.

Here’s how to wrap it up when it’s time.

• Model the calm. Both Dr. Brown and Dr. Hunter recommend helping your child take the energy level down, rather than expecting them to do so on their own. Dr. Brown suggests whispering, gentle touch or slow body movements and stretches to help transition out of roughhousing, while Dr. Hunter adds that reading, cuddling, getting a drink of water or taking a few deep breaths can be helpful.
• Make enough time for roughhousing. It’s best to allow “enough time for roughhousing to rev up, plateau and then cool down naturally,” Dr. Cohen explains. “Otherwise, the time to end turns into power struggles and upsets.” In other words, don’t try to squeeze in roughhousing when you have to be out the door in 10 minutes.
• …But use a timer if needed. “Switching gears is hard for little bodies and brains,” says Chandler A. “Setting a timer is really helpful to help them.” Mom Kate C. echoes: “We typically have to give warnings that roughhousing playtime is wrapping up and set timers to help wind things down.” When the timer goes off, redirecting your child to a quieter activity, like a book or puzzle, can help with calming things down.

Real Parents on How They Roughhouse With Their Toddlers

Here’s what roughhousing looks like in real households:

Kate C., mom of two in New York City

“My husband and I live in New York City with our 6-year-old daughter, 3.and-a-half-year-old son and 11-year-old dog. Generally speaking, we’re tight on space and high on energy most days and need to get creative with how we tire the kids out.

“For our family, I would constitute roughhousing as respectful physical play, and it’s almost like a love language for us. Both of our children are very physically active—they love climbing, doing gymnastics, running, jumping—and whenever we incorporate a physical aspect of play, we find they’re the most happy. They often roughhouse with each other by wrestling, doing gymnastics lifts and rolling around together. When my husband and I participate, fan-favorite games include pillow fights, any form of us spinning them around and tossing them onto the couch, allowing them to jump on us and pretending to be monsters and chasing and capturing them. They’ve always laughed the hardest and been the happiest when we’re on the ground with them, being silly and allowing them to basically use us as their climbing playground.”

Chandler A., mom of four in Tennessee

“We have four boys in our home. It’s a very loud, rambunctious and fun house! Roughhousing has always been a part of our daily rhythm. Honestly, when my first two were little boys (between 2 and 4 years old, especially), it was every second of every day. From the time their eyes opened until they closed them in a shared room each night, they were sprinting, jumping, climbing, wrestling and giggling with their hands on each other!

Alyssa T., mom of two in the Philadelphia area

“I have two boys, ages 4 and 22 months. My older son loves to tickle his brother and chase him [and] my husband is always ‘wrestling’ with the kids, especially right before bedtime. The boys love it and it helps get their energy out! I’ll tickle and play, but my husband is the one who wrestles and does the gentle tossing on the couch.

Kirsten K., mom of one in Connecticut

“Roughhousing looks like wrestling, throwing in the air, tumbling and tickling in our family. [Our 2-year-old son] is more confident in trying more physical things because of roughhousing. When we’re at the playground, he’s not scared of the heights from being thrown in the air with his dad.”

To Sum It Up

As long as it’s done safely, roughhousing is not only fun, but has a lot of benefits—including confidence-building, emotional regulation and physical skills. But one of the biggest pluses of rough-and-tumble play is strengthening the parent-child bond. “Roughhousing is great for everyone—moms as well as dads, girls as well as boys,” Dr. Cohen says. “Many, many parents tell us that they have as much fun roughhousing as their kids do.”

How We Developed This Article

Roughhousing is an important part of childhood development—but parents might wonder what, exactly, constitutes roughhousing and how to do it safely. To learn about the benefits of roughhousing and how to stay away from injury during physical play, we spoke with two pediatricians and a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in children’s play. We also asked four moms what roughhousing looks like in their house and how it’s benefited their families.

After editing, this article was vetted through fact-check and reviewed by our pediatrician medical adviser. Learn more about how we ensure the accuracy of our content through our editorial and medical review process.

About the author: As a mom of three boys, Lynsey Eidell has had a front-row seat to rough-and-tumble play for the past decade. When she’s not in the midst of a tickle war or breaking up a wrestling match gone too far, she can be found writing about everything from product reviews to parenting advice for The Bump. A graduate of Villanova University and a native of Fairfield County, Connecticut, Lynsey has also written for publications including People, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Teen Vogue, Allure and more.

Please note: The Bump and the materials and information it contains are not intended to, and do not constitute, medical or other health advice or diagnosis and should not be used as such. You should always consult with a qualified physician or health professional about your specific circumstances.