A real family's account of swapping the tablet for traditional games on Halloween night, with the research to explain why it worked better than anyone expected.
The short answer, for parents scanning this in a moment of pre-Halloween anxiety, is this: it worked. Not perfectly, not without two minor meltdowns and one spilled apple juice, but it worked well enough that the children asked to do it again the following weekend. If you are wondering whether a screen-free Halloween evening is realistic with a two or three-year-old, the evidence and the diary below both say yes, provided you go in with realistic expectations, a small kit of the right games, and the willingness to follow your child's lead rather than a rigid schedule.
What the research consistently shows is that toddlers do not need screens to stay calm or engaged on an unusual, stimulating evening. What they need is what developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik describes as the conditions for genuine exploration: a safe adult nearby, open-ended materials, and freedom to move between activities without pressure to perform. Halloween, with its costumes and sensory novelty, is already rich stimulus. The screen, it turns out, is often a dampener rather than an enhancer.
What the research says about play and screen time in under-fives
The World Health Organization recommends that children aged two to four have no more than one hour of sedentary screen time per day, and that the quality of any screen time matters as much as quantity. The WHO's 2019 guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under five emphasise that sedentary screen time should not replace active, social or imaginative play, particularly in the evening hours before sleep.
The previous Halloween had involved a well-intentioned animated film that, by half past six, had produced an over-stimulated three-year-old who could not settle until nearly nine. This year, with a toddler of two and a half and a neighbour's child of three joining us, the plan was simple: no film, no tablet, a handful of games, and supper by candlelight in the kitchen. The worries were equally simple. Would they be bored? Would they miss the film and demand it loudly? Would the evening collapse into chaos by six o'clock?
The preparation took about twenty minutes the afternoon before. A small pile of wooden toys on the sitting-room floor, a set of skittles moved into the hallway, one puzzle kept back for later in the evening, and a dressing-up basket topped up with a few extra scarves and hats. That was it. No elaborate activity stations, no timetable on the wall.
The first half-hour was exactly what you would expect: two small children in costumes, extremely pleased with themselves, absolutely no interest in any game whatsoever. The witch hat came off within four minutes. The spider-man gloves lasted longer because they were difficult to remove. This half-hour was not about organised play. It was about letting the excitement breathe. We put on no music, offered no structured activity, and simply sat on the floor with them while they careered around the room showing each other their costumes.
This, it turns out, is exactly right. Jeffrey Trawick-Smith's observational research on toddler play quality notes that children entering a new social or sensory situation need an unstructured settling period before they are cognitively ready to engage with more sustained play. Trying to introduce a game in the first twenty minutes would almost certainly have produced frustration rather than focus.
Once the initial fizz had settled, we brought out the skittles. The hallway became a bowling lane. Neither child had the muscle coordination to knock all the skittles down cleanly, which turned out to be entirely beside the point. What they were doing, we realised, was taking turns, which at two and three is genuinely hard work. Each successful knock produced a roar of celebration. Each miss produced either stoic acceptance or a request for another go, which we always granted.
After about fifteen minutes, interest in the skittles dipped. We shifted to a simple wooden stacking game at the coffee table. This held the three-year-old for another ten minutes and the two-year-old for about four, before she discovered that knocking it over was more satisfying than building it. We let her knock it over. Jaques London's range of traditional games and wooden toys is well suited to exactly this kind of flexible, child-led play, with pieces robust enough to survive the enthusiastic attentions of a toddler.
Browse Jaques London's traditional games, crafted for family play since 1795A brief attempt at a card-matching game fell flat in under three minutes. Two children, one set of cards, and a rule requiring them to wait: too many variables for this age and this hour. We packed it away without comment and moved on. This is perhaps the most useful piece of practical wisdom in the entire diary: packing something away calmly, without fanfare, removes it as a source of conflict and preserves the mood of the evening.
On the value of open-ended play materials
Researchers Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff, whose work on playful learning has shaped early childhood policy in several countries, argue that the most developmentally valuable toys are those that respond to the child rather than performing for them. A wooden skittle knocked over by a toddler's own effort produces a richer learning experience than a screen-based game that rewards button-pressing with animation. The child's agency, their sense that their action caused a real, physical result, is precisely the mechanism that builds early confidence and causal reasoning.
This was, unexpectedly, the best hour of the evening. Both children had eaten a small supper at six o'clock and returned to the sitting room in a noticeably different register: quieter, more focused, more willing to stay with one thing. We introduced a wooden floor puzzle with large pieces. The three-year-old led, the two-year-old handed pieces across, and the whole thing became a collaborative project lasting nearly twenty minutes.
What followed was entirely child-led and entirely unplanned. The two-year-old put her witch hat back on, decided she was a cat, and began offering invisible soup to anyone who would accept it. The three-year-old became her customer. This pretend play ran for the better part of half an hour, with adults drafted in as occasional soup recipients. Psychologist Stuart Brown's research on play identifies this kind of spontaneous narrative play as one of the purest and most important forms of childhood play, arising naturally when the environment is calm and the child feels unhurried.
By seven o'clock there was one tearful episode, mercifully brief, when the witch hat was wanted by both children simultaneously. It resolved itself within two minutes when one of them decided hats were, in any case, not interesting. This is the hour when the temptation to reach for a screen is strongest, because the children are tired and the adults are tired, and a screen feels like a guaranteed solution. What the research suggests is that it is, in fact, the worst time to introduce one.
Paediatrician and researcher Jenny Radesky, whose work examines digital media use in young children, has noted that screens before bed displace the slower, quieter interactions, stories, conversation, simple sensory play, that support emotional regulation and sleep readiness. We read two short picture books, built a very small tower of wooden blocks together, and then began the bath and bed sequence. Both children were asleep within twenty minutes of lights out, which was not the norm after previous screen-heavy evenings.
Play, sleep and the under-five brain
The American Academy of Pediatrics advises that screens should be avoided for at least one hour before bedtime in young children, noting that the stimulating content of most screen media, including child-directed programming, elevates arousal at precisely the moment when the brain needs to begin its descent toward sleep. Calm physical play, storytelling and familiar sensory objects serve the opposite function.
What worked: skittles, the floor puzzle, the dressing-up basket, supper as a mid-evening reset, and a willingness to abandon anything that was not holding attention. What flopped: the card-matching game, any expectation that an activity would last longer than fifteen minutes, and the moment around half past six when we tried to suggest they dance to music rather than following where the play had naturally gone.
What we would do differently: prepare one or two more open-ended options, perhaps some wooden threading beads or a simple posting toy for the younger child, and start supper slightly earlier to protect the sweet-spot hour before tiredness sets in.
All of the above ask nothing of a battery, a charger or a wifi connection. They respond to the child, not the other way around. Jaques London has been making precisely this kind of play possible since 1795, and their wooden toys collection offers a considered range suited to different ages and temperaments within the under-five years.
Explore Jaques London's wooden toys, designed for real, lasting playThe key is not to frame the absence of the screen as a loss. Do not announce that there will be no film tonight. Simply do not turn the screen on, and have something physical and engaging already in the room when the children arrive. Toddlers move toward whatever is interesting in their immediate environment. If the floor has skittles on it, the skittles will almost always win over a blank television. If a meltdown does come, meet it calmly, acknowledge the feeling briefly, and redirect to a simple sensory activity: pouring water, handling textured objects, or moving around the room. The emotional storm in toddlers passes far faster than most parents expect when it is not prolonged by conflict over the screen.
No single toy will hold a toddler's attention for an entire evening, and this is not a failing of the toy but a feature of the developmental stage. Toddlers are designed to flit, sample and return. The advantage of wooden toys is that they invite re-engagement. A set of skittles can be a bowling game, then a construction material, then a counting exercise, then simply objects to carry around. Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff use the phrase "the power of the unstructured object" to describe exactly this quality. Rotate three or four items across the evening rather than expecting one to do all the work.
True rule-following in games typically emerges between three and a half and five years, in line with Piaget's stages of play development. But this does not mean younger children cannot participate in traditional games. A two-year-old playing skittles is not following a bowling game's rules but is learning cause and effect, gross motor coordination, and the social pleasure of shared activity. The game is the vehicle; the learning is the journey alongside it. Expecting a two-year-old to take turns reliably or to care about a score will lead to frustration. Expecting them to enjoy the physical act of rolling a ball and watching things fall will almost always be rewarded.
Longevity in a child's toy depends on open-endedness, material quality and adaptability across ages. Jaques London, established in 1795 and the world's oldest games company, has built its reputation on exactly these qualities. Their wooden toys and traditional games collections span a wide age range, meaning a set of skittles bought for a two-year-old will still be in use at five and beyond. You can explore the full range at jaqueslondon.co.uk/collections/wooden-toys and jaqueslondon.co.uk/collections/traditional-games.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.