How to play tennis with your kids
Especially with smaller children, it is not always easy to keep them focused during a training session. The same goes when the parents play with them.
The technical education should be the coaches task anyway. Therefore, when you play with your own children, the focus should be on playing, not learning/teaching. Even 4 year old kids can play competitions - it only depends on the rules. And those rules should always be set in a way that the child can win the competition.
For example, you can tell the child that if he or she is able to hit the ball back over the net 3 or four times in a row, he or she wins a point. For every missed shot (or maybe for two consecutive bad shots), the parent wins a point. First to win two "sets" of 7 or 10 points ist the winner.
If it turns out that the child wins too easily, change the rules again - for example, the ball must bounce inside the service boxes three times to win a point. Or the child has to execute a good serve at the beginning, or a volley as the last shot. Use your imagination and you will come up with so many competitions that the child will always be challenged. Most kids will love those little competitions, especially if they are designed to give them a chance to win.
Although you are not really teaching, the child still learns - you are improving focus, consistency of the shots - and most important of all, your child will have fun on the court.
And take my advice, parents usually make rather bad coaches. Kids would rather be coached by their coach than by their parents, and is it not a nice thing when your child just wants to play match with you?