Is this bad parenting?

[LazyLockdown]

So dd's routine for a while has made it so by the time she's up, had breakfast, washed, dressed, etc. She has about only 30 minutes maximum before she has her next nap. I've been letting her play on her own for those few minutes, while I have some time on social media, or catch up tv. Both perfectly happy with that routine.

Now over the last couple of weeks, her nap routine has changed. Those "free" 30 minutes have turned in around an hour and a half. Ordinarily I would be happy about this and we'd get out in the morning, park or grab some shopping. But obviously that's not really ideal at the moment. So we've kept our routine, Dd will play alone on the floor and I'll have some lazy time basically.

I've just jokingly asked dd's dad if it's wrong to do this for an hour and a half every morning and he's seriously replied "Yes, you need to be supervising her properly."
It's not like dd is shoved in a play pen and ignored, I'm still watching her, talking to her, stopping her from chasing the cats, breastfeeding if she asks. I'm just not actively sat on the floor playing? She gets loads of proper one on one time for the rest of the day.

So am I being a shit lazy parent mumsnet?

I'm so glad my children are older and I can forget about all the judgemental crap that is thrown at parents, or more specifically mother's, of babies and toddlers.

If a baby is happy to lie on the floor on their own, leave them to it. As long as you are in the room, keeping them safe and not ignoring them, you don't need to be 'teaching' them constantly. They're presumably touching their toys and making noises and looking at the sun coming through the window and making shapes on the wall and all the other things that are a learning experience every minute of every day.

Oh trust me every other hour of the day is spent together. Especially at the minute when there isn't even any baby groups to entertain her. Even when doing housework she loves to toddle behind and "help" put the washing on the airer etc.

Why does autocorrect insist on putting apostrophes in ?

Thanks for everyones opinions

I’ve attached the NCT advice but excluded all the pages on how to play with a baby because obviously that’s not wanted.

How rude are you?!

The OP quite clearly shows that she does a lot with her DD, but atm things are a bit different because she’s with her 24/7

Sounds perfect. A toddler that can play independently means they have imagination. She can obviously entertain herself for a bit and that’s really great !

Sounds perfect OP. I have a 12 month old who wants to be carried around like a bloody queen while she points at objects she wants to play with. She screams her little head off if I don't constantly entertain her and it's absolutely draining but she is my third so I keep repeating "this too shall pass "😀😀😀. She is currently asleep and I am enjoying a hot cup of tea and a new episode of greys anatomy while the other two are happily playing Star Wars.

You could still get out for walk/bike ride (if you cycle) with her as pps said.
There is research about parents being on phones /screens that it is a lot worse than we might expect which you might want to look into as is relevant for you as you're looking at internet stuff in that time - i don't know enough about it yet but apparently Philipa Perry summarises it in her new-ish book.

She can play alone? You are fantastically lucky and definitely enjoy your lazy time (where you are only watching, talking and reacting to her needs!!)
Your husband is an idiot. Noone can play all day long.

Not that she shouldn't learn how to entertain herself of course just the thing with parents on screens may be a worry.

It’s not rude. The op wants her baby to play independently! So why would I attach a load of pages on 1:1 play when she’s already doing it? I have a slightly different opinion but it’s not rude to exclude info and say why. It gives the op the opportunity to look at the pages if she wishes. The post wasn’t addressed to anytime else.

So envious. At that age mine were mini hurricanes, destroying everything in their path

@BubblesBuddy - it has been well researched that babies learn through interaction, but it has also been well researched that independent play is beneficial to a baby’s development, so the approach of the OP and pretty much everyone else on this thread of giving a child some time to play on their own whilst supervised and then interacting for the rest of the day seems much more rounded than to interact non stop all day.

I haven’t said non stop all day. I said 1 hour 30 minutes was quite a long time to leave a baby to play whilst mum does catch up tv etc. It seems a large chunk of time to me.

I forgot: I was looking at this from a language development point of view too. I can see there are advantages to exploring and being creative but we have so many DC starting school with poor language acquisition it seems a long time to have virtually no interaction with an adult. I’m happy for others to disagree.

Your dp is a controlling knob?

How much alone time does he have with her?

Bloody hell op you need that time to just do something for you. You can't entertain her the whole day.

It’s fine

My eldest is 8 now but I definitely used to pop her on the carpet with a selection of toys, Walker etc around her whilst I sat on the settee and watched tv, ate crumpets and drank tea.

Was never able to in the same way once her Brothers turned up 😂

She seems perfectly fine still 🤷‍♀️

I think 90 minutes is too long to play alone at 12 months (although I could just be jealous because my 7 year old has never managed that!)

Assuming that you prepare lunch, dinner, do chores etc, go for a walk and she has a long afternoon nap and bath and bed at 7ish, how much 1on1 undistracted time do you manage to fit in reading/playing with her?

From what you wrote it sounds like you are properly supervising her!
My first was the same. Playing happily by himself. My tip, keep it up. If you start entertaining her all the time she will get used to it!

Enjoy it. Dd 4 won’t play by herself for even a moment. Learning to self occupy is a great skill and given you play the rest of the day it’s doing no harm!

I'm very concerned that you appear to have a unicorn instead of a baby my three year old can't entertain herself for that long, she managed 10 mins today whilst i dealt with a serious phone call and I have spent the rest of the day thanking her for it because it was UNPRECEDENTED. At 12 months I literally could not so much as wee without her following me and demanding to be spoken to/entertained.

As long as she's not absorbed in a screen and is happily amusing herself, let her at it for as long as she is happy! Children will let you know when they want you. She gets one to one time. I think that as and when you're ready to be away from her overnight, your husband needs to spend a weekend alone with her to get an understanding of the fact that not every minute of a very long day (and often significant chunks of the night!) with a pre-verbal, highly dependant child has to be (or can be) 'quality time'.

Sounds fine to me. I'm sure OP interacts with her at that time anyway