By Neha Mital, 

Co-founder, InfiniteLearning Room Pvt. Ltd.

Having spent much of my career in design, I have always been interested in one question: what makes people engage with something?

Good design doesn't simply communicate information. It invites you in, makes you curious and gives you a reason to participate.

I began to see this differently when I became a parent.

We want our children to understand themselves, communicate with others, and manage the ups and downs of life. We often explain, guide, reason and sometimes repeat ourselves. But children don't always learn simply by being told what they should feel or how they should behave. Of course, children also learn by observing and modelling the adults around them. But they don't always learn simply by being told.

It got my team and me wondering: what if there was another, more light-hearted way?

What if, instead of always talking to children about emotions, we created more fun loving experiences and ways to practise these skills?

That is what makes learning through play so interesting to me. Children get engrossed in play, and they learn without necessarily feeling that they are being taught.

And there is research behind this thinking. A 2023 meta-analysis by Li, Ma and Shi found that gamification can positively support educational learning. A 2025 review by Gómez-León also found encouraging evidence that serious games can help children and adolescents practise emotional regulation strategies.

There is another aspect of play that matters to me as a parent. We want children to understand that feelings are a normal part of being human. Yet conversations around emotions and mental health can sometimes feel uncomfortable, especially when they happen only after something has gone wrong.

Games can make these conversations more natural. The intention isn't to turn every game into a lesson. It's to make emotional learning accessible, engaging and something children can return to.

I keep coming back to one thought: we don't expect children to learn to ride a bicycle by listening to instructions alone. They need to get on, try, wobble, fall and try again.

Why should emotional skills be any different?