Teach me how to play

[ImAnAutum]

Please answer me honestly, how much time do you spend playing with your dc? I'm off 2-3 days a week and all weekend. Youngest is dd 7. She is home at 3.15 from school. 2 activities afterschool on 2 different days, but just for an hour. I live in fear of hearing the words "mummy will you play with me?" It makes me feel like the worst mum because my stomach sinks and I hate it. But I don't want to be like this.

I have absolutely zero memories of my dm playing with me. I don't know if it matters but I am autistic. I never really played growing up. My head was literally always in a book or I just spent time alone because I really love the quite or I just went for walks in my head to random places. I think I'm maybe just not a fun person. I have such an imagination in my own head but just get so stuck at play

I plan lots of craft stuff and I've got jigsaws down, I think because these are 'quite' type things. I want her to remember me as the mum who always played with her. Of my 4-5 days at home, we maybe only 'play' one one or two. I don't think this is enough and I want to do more. I want to be the fun mum and make her laugh and be happy. She adores me and is literally my shadow. I just want her to have good, simple memories of us together.

Please would anyone have any tips or ideas on how I can learn how to play and hopefully learn to enjoy it to?

Doll families and friends is quite a good one to play. I used to play stuffed animal families with DC1 and still do sometimes. At the risk of sounding tedious, it was quite a good way to model messages about how we should treat each other.

Monkey walloped Giraffe's head on the chair. "Oh no Monkey, Giraffe has a sore head now and will have to go to hospital and can't play with you anymore".
"Do you want to say sorry to Giraffe, Monkey? That would be kind because Giraffe is very sad."
Then Giraffe would be taken to the hospital and bandaged up.

The 5/6/7yo stories tend to centre around parties and groups and things like that. Lots of "you're not allowed to play with us!", "you're boring!", "ok then I'll play by myself and my game will be MUCH BETTER than yours". I find it interesting as a way to connect with DC1 and work out what is going on at school.

With DD my dad did the roleplay I was terrible at and was great at taking her to the park to be pushed for the billionth time on the swings.

My mum was / is great at baking with her.

I was great at reading, arts and crafts and board games. Or I'd put 'fiddly-dee' music on (river dance) and shed stomp and spin around the living room when small

As your DD is older what you could also do is put Just Dance on the TV on YouTube and do dances with her, I bet she'd love it and you just have to attempt to copy the screen.

Between us she had a well rounded childhood with us all playing to our strengths.

She's a teen now, bright and lovely in everyway. She has a great relationship with all of us because we spent good pockets of quality time with her.

@singleandproud even I want to go to your house and play now 🤣 I have so many great ideas now, thanks so much everyone. Had been slightly worried I was going to be told I was a terrible mother and it should all come naturally! I actually can't wait until she wakes up tomorrow now. I think just dance on YouTube will be our first stop!

@ImAnAutum my child is 4 and obsessed with role play so I feel your pain - I hate it too 😅

Remember there’s more than one way to play with dolls though! Maybe it’s bath night for the dolls - get a tub of warm soapy water and give them a bath. Or get out all the bobbles and hair stuff and give them a trip to the hairdressers etc. DS always wants to “play cars” which involves role playing driving them round and round all day and I frequently set up a “car wash” as I find that easier to get involved in rather than just pretending the cars are doing stuff if that makes sense 😅😂

During the day we also each pick activities that we do for a week while. So he might want me crawling round being a dinosaur (😬😅) so I’ll say “yeah, let’s do that! Then after that I’d like to play restaurants!”. So we play dinosaurs and then for restaurants I get out all veg or wherever for dinner/lunch/batch cooking and we chop all that up together while “playing” 😅 I find this much less monotonous because I’m getting stuff done at the same time and he loves it because it’s real cooking!

The dance games that another poster suggested sound like a great idea too 😊 what else does your DD enjoy doing aside from role play?

If it helps I'm not autistic but I just can't do imaginary play, I hate it. So I play board games, crafts, baking, going for walks, taking to activities with other children, Lego, card games. I'll be an 'audience' for a show. But he knows I can't do the other kid of play and I think that's kinda important because it's teaching that everyone is different and you can still have fun with different people in different ways

When DS was little his teddy sometimes played board games with us! So that might be a way of incorporating her dolls in your play.

@crumblingschools ah yes, we did that too, especially as there was only two of us and some card / board games need more than 2 players.

One of my favourite memories of when DD was small is she wanted to throw her teddy a birthday party, - it was the summer and we were having a BBQ at my parents anyway, so I asked her what things bear needed for her birthday (cake, the happy birthday song, pass the parcel, decorations and balloons) so I dug out the last lot of Happy Birthday banners and unused balloons and my dad stuck them on the garden fence, I whizzed off to Morrisons for their sponge cake and some candles, mum gave DD some newspaper and she wrapped up random things from around the house, and it was the loveliest afternoon, we all sang happy birthday to bear and then got cake.

But having that sort of scenario, or playing hairdressers or bath time is a great shout and much easier to do then freestyleing the whole thing.

I hope you and DD have a fab day today and get lots of play in of all types!

If you play in a way you also enjoy it will be more fun for your daughter than if you are trying to force your way through something that doesn't come naturally. If your husband likes doing the dolls and stuff I'd leave it to him.

My husband does crafts with our daughters because he is good at it and glue and glitter and ribbons and clay is my idea of a boring nightmare. And I play dolls with them.
When we do dolls it is like drama sort of, because we are playing the dolls characters- its not me getting in the pink car to go take the doll family to a picnic (where they will have to investigate a stolen purse or lost dog or something) its Bella the mum doll. My kids are quite into mysteries at the moment so usually we are solving something, before that there were orphans escaping an evil person, party planning, doing tasks for the king (big frog puppet), or something loosley based on a book or tv show they have liked recently. There is usually some form of peril or dramatic argument and its fun its like doing an improv soap opera.

I sometimes sit with DS (7) as he explains what he is doing with his Playmobils, or pop into his room, praise the current set-up and he explains it to me. All the figures have characters and backstories and it’s good to get an update and appreciated that I remember who‘s who and where they’re at.

For roleplays, I‘ve always found it easier to get his cuddly toys to play roles. Then you can do mad things like shoplift, fall asleep in the tomatoes and stop the cuddly lion eating everyone else. His role ends up being managing his toys‘ bad behaviour…

We do silly 5-min pockets of play without toys. After experiencing an Alexa at a friend‘s house, we pretend he has one - and his cuddly toys like to use and abuse it. He has to firefight…

I found it a lot easier with toys like Duplo and brio. I‘d build something for his game, altering the layout as the game progressed.

We also have things we do together like board games (I‘ve taught him to play chess and we practice every now and again, showing him tactics during the game), card games and similar (incl. things like Jenga/ hungry hippos). We both love stories and I read to him a lot. We‘ll also watch films together of the books we‘ve read. And we‘ve finally found Arts and crafts he actually enjoys - we‘ll sit together with an audio book on and do something in parallel, commenting on the story and what we‘re doing/ talking about our days.

He has a lot of friends around and they‘re still at the age where they‘ll talk to me before disappearing to play. I sat with two of them yesterday while they made loom bands, and there‘s a group coming around next week to play monopoly.

I think rather than ‘playing’, I’m involved in and develop his interests (and know his friends), and that creates a bond, too.

DH does lots of sport with him.

This is why I had 3 DC, so they can play with each other!
There are some games that are just better suited to kids playing with each other. Invite a friend over to play dolls, and you can do the stuff you enjoy, jigsaws, drawing, reading, dance , whatever you actually like.