3 year old won't play independently

[eachpeachpea]

I'm 38 weeks pregnant, in a lot of pain and discomfort and suffering with a really heavy cold on top of that. Partner works away so isn't home Monday - Friday. DS turned 3 in October and just doesn't like playing independently. He will moan and whine if I ask him to give something a go himself. He's currently at nursery 2 full days and my parents look after him one full day (was 2 days before I started mat leave, but they're always happy to help). I'm finding myself relying on tv more than I would like because I'm finding my patience wearing thin at the moment and I don't like it. I will get whatever he wants to play with out but he always insists I help him or do it with him or says he can't do it when I know he definitely can. Obviously I do play with him, things such as his duplo, magnatiles, tea parties (his favourite) and we do lots of reading etc but I just want to encourage a bit more independence with his play. Even simple things such as putting figures in his toy cars he will bring them over for me to do.

Anyone been through similar and have any advice or suggestions?

That sounds like normal 3 year old behaviour and if you weren’t heavily pregnant with a cold you wouldn’t bat an eyelid to doing those things for him. Mine didn’t really play independently until they were at least 4. So no advice just sympathy!

Not pregnant but my three year old daughter is very similar! She’s lovely and generally well behaved but quite ‘high maintenance’ in terms of the attention and engagement she needs 24/7. Tips and tricks I’ve found that sometimes work are starting playing on the mat with her, building with magnatiles etc, doing that for 10/15 minutes then saying I’m going to make a cup of tea/do laundry and then I’ll listen in and now about fifty percent of the time she’ll continue playing happily for a bit. Little figures are helpful for imaginative play. I also found pens that write on the windows which she loves but obviously a little risky unsupervised! A Tonie box sometimes helps and music too as a step away from tv but so it doesn’t feel too quiet.

I’d try building up to it. Find a short job to do. Set him up with something but tell him you’re popping off to do the dishwasher or whatever and you can play again after you’ve finished. Every time he interrupts stop so the task doesn’t progress until he’s off doing his thing independently again. Once you have success doing a short job like unstacking the dishwasher then make the job a bit longer.