A warm, research-backed guide to adapting the classic game so every toddler stays in, stays happy, and genuinely learns something along the way.
The short answer, if you are standing in a living room right now with a tearful three-year-old: drop the elimination rule entirely. For children under five, the traditional version of Simon Says, where a wrong move means sitting out and watching others play, simply does not match where they are developmentally. Replace "you're out" with "that one was tricky, let's all try again," and the game transforms from a source of frustration into one of the richest listening, language and self-regulation activities you can offer without a single piece of equipment.
The adapted principle is straightforward. Keep every child in the game for every round. Celebrate near-misses as cheerfully as successes. Let the three-year-old take a turn as Simon early and often. These three changes, each supported by what developmental researchers have been telling us for decades, are enough to turn tears into laughter and to make the developmental benefits of the game actually available to the age group that needs them most.
In the traditional game, one player takes the role of Simon and issues commands, sometimes prefaced with "Simon says" and sometimes not. Players must follow only the commands that begin with that phrase. Anyone who follows an unprefaced command, or who fails to follow a correctly prefaced one, is eliminated and must sit out until a winner remains. The game's roots are murky, but its earliest English-language references appear in the nineteenth century, and versions of the same listening-and-inhibition game exist across dozens of cultures under different names. The underlying structure, listen carefully, filter what you hear, and control an impulse to act, is ancient and genuinely useful.
Simon Says is, at its core, an executive-function workout disguised as a party game. Executive function, the cluster of mental skills that includes working memory, cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control, is one of the strongest predictors of later academic and social success. The game asks children to hold a rule in mind (only obey Simon), monitor incoming language for a specific signal, and suppress an automatic motor response when that signal is absent. For a three-year-old, that is genuinely demanding and genuinely developmental.
What the Research Tells Us
Adele Diamond, whose laboratory work on executive function in young children is among the most cited in developmental psychology, has shown that inhibitory control, the ability to stop a prepotent response, develops rapidly between ages three and seven and is highly trainable through playful repetition. Games that require a child to pause before acting are among the most effective informal exercises available to parents and educators.
Beyond inhibition, Simon Says builds vocabulary (the commands introduce body-part names, positional language and action verbs), practises listening comprehension, and, when played in a group, nurtures the kind of shared attention that Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff identify as foundational to early learning. It is, in the most literal sense, a language bath and a movement session rolled into one.
Three-year-olds are not small five-year-olds. Their prefrontal cortex, the region most responsible for inhibitory control, is in an early and relatively fragile phase of development. Expecting a child of this age to reliably suppress a motor impulse when a verbal cue is absent is, neurologically, asking a great deal. When they fail, and they will fail often, they experience not only the disappointment of the mistake but also the social sting of exclusion. Being made to sit and watch peers continue playing is a genuinely painful experience at an age when belonging to the group is a primary emotional need.
On Play and Emotional Safety
Jeffrey Trawick-Smith, whose decades of research on early childhood play quality have shaped classroom practice across the United States, notes that the emotional tone of a play experience determines whether its cognitive benefits are actually realised. A child who is anxious about making a mistake is not in the neurological state required to learn from the activity. Psychological safety is not a soft add-on: it is a prerequisite for genuine engagement.
This is worth sitting with. The elimination rule does not just feel unkind; it actively undermines the developmental purpose of the game for the children most likely to be eliminated first.
The simplest and most effective adaptation is to reframe mistakes as collective rather than individual. When a child moves without "Simon says," respond warmly: "Ooh, that was a sneaky one, that caught nearly everyone, let's keep going." The child remains standing, the group remains intact, and the moment passes without shame. You can also introduce a brief "wobble rule," anyone who wobbles does a funny wobble dance rather than sitting down, which converts the error into its own small reward.
A second adaptation is to slow the pace considerably. Adult-led Simon Says often rattles through commands at a speed that challenges even older children. For three-year-olds, leave a genuine pause between each command, give them time to process the language and the instruction, and narrate what is happening: "Simon says touch your nose. Everyone's nose. Look at all those noses." The running commentary, warm and unhurried, keeps lagging children connected without making them feel singled out.
Third, choose commands that are intrinsically joyful rather than merely physically demanding. "Simon says roar like a lion" or "Simon says move like a very slow jellyfish" generate enough laughter that a missed instruction hardly registers against the overall fun.
Handing the role of Simon to a three-year-old, even briefly, is one of the most powerful adaptations available. Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development suggests that children learn most effectively when they are slightly stretched beyond their current level with support. Playing Simon is that stretch: it requires the child to think about language from the speaker's perspective, to anticipate whether others will follow, and to experience the quiet authority of leading a group. Even if their commands are wonderfully chaotic ("Simon says be a biscuit"), the role carries enormous pride and engagement.
Cooperative variants work equally well for small groups. In one version, the group works together to complete a sequence of Simon Says commands as a team, with a shared celebration at the end rather than any individual winner. In another, every player takes turns as Simon in a circle, making the role an honour that rotates rather than a prize one child keeps. Both approaches align with what Peter Gray has described as the self-directed, non-competitive heart of genuine play in early childhood.
Explore Jaques London's Traditional Games, where the spirit of inclusive, multigenerational play has been at the heart of every design since 1795.A Note on Language-Rich Commands
Hart and Risley's landmark research on early language environments demonstrated that the variety and richness of words children encounter in the first years of life has lasting effects on vocabulary and comprehension. Simon Says is an effortless way to introduce positional words (under, beside, behind), body vocabulary, animal names and action verbs in a context so engaging that children barely notice they are expanding their lexicon.
The listening, turn-taking and impulse-control skills that Simon Says develops are a foundation for a whole family of traditional games. Skittles, for instance, requires a child to wait, aim, and release, a small but meaningful exercise in regulated action that shares the same attentional muscles. Traditional outdoor games such as croquet for children ask for sequential thinking and patient observation of others' turns. Any game in which a child must watch, wait, and then act is building the same executive-function pathways that Simon Says targets.
Browse Jaques London's Outdoor Games collection for traditional lawn games that carry those same skills into the garden and fresh air.Jaques of London, established in 1795 and the world's oldest games company, has been crafting games that ask children to listen, wait, and engage with one another across generations. That heritage is not nostalgia: it reflects a long-held understanding that the best games are the ones that bring people together rather than pushing them apart.
This is entirely normal and tells you something useful: your child cares about the game and wants to do well, which is a wonderful starting point. The solution is to remove the stakes, not the game. Make it explicit, before you begin, that there are no mistakes in your version, only surprising moments. When an error happens, respond with theatrical delight ("Ooh, Simon nearly got you there!") rather than any correction. Over several sessions, as your child experiences the game as safe, the emotional response to imperfection will gradually soften. If tears persist, hand them the role of Simon immediately: leading is almost always more regulating than following at this age.
Most children begin to grasp the inhibitory rule, and manage it with some consistency, between four and five years of age. This aligns with the broader developmental research on inhibitory control, which shows measurable improvement across this window. By five or six, many children can play the competitive version with genuine strategic awareness. At three, it is entirely appropriate to play without the elimination rule and to treat the "Simon says" prefix more as a rhythmic signal than a test. The cognitive challenge is still present and worthwhile, even without the penalty structure.
A good rule of thumb is roughly one minute per year of age as a baseline for focused, led activity, meaning ten to fifteen minutes is a realistic and comfortable arc for most three-year-olds. In practice, watch the child rather than the clock: yawning, distraction, silliness that derails rather than enriches the game, and physical restlessness are all signs that the session has reached its natural end. Finishing slightly before the child is ready, leaving them wanting more, is far better than pushing through to the point of meltdown. Short, joyful sessions repeated across many days build far more skill than long exhausting ones.
It is genuinely both, and the language benefits are substantial. Every command is a sentence for a child to parse in real time, connecting words to meanings and to bodily experience, which is one of the richest forms of vocabulary acquisition available. Patricia Kuhl's research on early language learning emphasises that children learn language most effectively when it is embedded in social, emotionally engaging contexts, and Simon Says provides exactly that. You can extend the language benefit deliberately by varying your vocabulary, using less familiar words alongside familiar ones, and by encouraging the child acting as Simon to narrate their own commands. Over time, the game becomes a comfortable space in which new words arrive naturally and without pressure.
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