To ask what you do with 1-1.5 year old

[ThatsNotMyCherry]

What sort of activities did you do with your kids at this age? Was most of their time spent on free play or doing things with you? Can’t help feeling like I should be doing more. Thanks

I’m my experience this is the worst age. They can’t quite walk properly or communicate effectively and you are still slightly enslaved to a routine if you want to get any decent sleep.
We used to go on little rides around the village on a push along trike. Play in the sandpit.
The bath. Book time. Play doh in the high chair.
Banging kitchen pots and pans.
It is a bit dull, as adorable as they are.

By the time they are 20 months it suddenly becomes so much easier. My baby was 16 months at start of lockdown, not quite walking and no words. Still needed to be ‘helicoptered’ or at least very heavily supervised for safety.

Now at 22 months she’s an absolute delight. Taking, running around. Able to communicate her needs and properly take part in daily activities all the family do. Such as gardening (she’ll dig in the mud or pick fruit etc) , bug hunting, free play With dolls or small Toy animals etc , riding her trike independently, helping with cooking (playing with ingredients like flour and raisins), sweeping, dusting, Drawing, Rocking horse, play doh. We can go for a short walk and pick blackberries or something and she can play in the park properly.
Hang in there, it gets significantly easier soon x

We stand and toddle, and sit, and stand and toddle, and sit and stand and toddle, and open cupboards and pull everything out, and sit and chew on things, and stand and toddle, and fall over.

We try to read books (she chews them), we try to play with teddies/dolls (she chews them).

We sing nursery rhymes, she bobs along to the music, trying to stand.

We go out into the garden, she points at planes, she stands and sits and tries to eat the grass and leaves. She gets terribly excited by a pigeon and tries to stand and toddle after it (unsuccessfully), and sits.

We play peekaboo, she laughs lots.

She cruises round the furniture, chewing anything that might be tasty (or that definitely should not be chewed).

Life is very simple: sit, stand, toddle, chew.

Go and play in the park with her ball, play with her toys (she really only will play for any length of time if I play with her), some play dates, nursery rhymes, let her around the place while supervised, and she has a bit of TV as well (shoot me...)

Oh yes CBeebies is your friend here...

Oh and her bubble machine. She loves that

I have a three-year-old and a 9-month-old. I am dreading the year to a year and a half age. It's the hardest bit. My baby is still a baby and easy to watch over, my three-year-old is engaging and you can reason with him (just about). At a year to a year and a half, children are lunatics. Totally mobile, zero sense. It's THE most exhausting age. I spent that time staggering around after my son, taking objects out of his hands / mouth, clearing up mess after mess... and I'll be doing the same with my daughter very soon. Swimming, softplay, play dates etc. all help but they're in short supply right now...

Took DS to the park. He was walking at 11 months so he was safely off the ground around the equipment by then. He could crawl up steps and go down the slide independently. I pushed him on the swing. I took him to soft play too. He didn't stop moving, crawling, climbing, walking then running, between 6 and 18 months so a lot of physical activities. After 18 months was easier as he would look at books and do puzzles too.

Sweet fuck all OP just waited it out until they became more interesting. Fostering independent play as much as possible will be great for your DC and for you. Otherwise just take them out and about to keep your sanity.

This thread has frightened me! I will be three months pregnant when my DC turns 1! In for an interesting 6 months it seems....

I have a 17 month old who is really difficult to entertain. She’s happiest following her 2 yo sibling around grabbing every toy they hold! Aside from that, we get some time out of an Ikea kitchen, water (literally holding her up so she can run her dummy under the tap amuses her for half an hour or washing hands!), beach walks, a ride on airplane, dinosaurs and duplo.

My DS is 13 months and walking. I rotate his toys so that it keeps the amount of clutter down and he doesn't become tired of the same things, I keep a mental note of things he's not playing with as much and put them away but keep out things he's playing with a lot. I rotate his books too. I read a lot to him, and sometimes he likes to turn pages and look at pictures on his own. He likes being chased too.

I make sure he goes out every day, even if it's just our garden, we have a swing set with a baby seat, a slide and a bouncy animal thing which keeps him busy. Sometimes I'll take him for a walk where he walks himself and sometimes I'll take him out in his buggy.

He likes destroying banging things, pulling my phone charging cable/pipes off the wall things and touching sockets & plugs anything he shouldn't.

I try to narrate most things I/DS am/is doing or about to do, I'm also mixing "Ready, steady, go" with "1, 2, 3" and then the 'fun' thing. We have quite a few made up games and activities and I try to incorporate simple instructions within that.

And we can go entire mornings where one of us is saying "no" repeatedly and the other is crying. Not saying which way around.

@Snoodleberry

We stand and toddle, and sit, and stand and toddle, and sit and stand and toddle, and open cupboards and pull everything out, and sit and chew on things, and stand and toddle, and fall over.

We try to read books (she chews them), we try to play with teddies/dolls (she chews them).

We sing nursery rhymes, she bobs along to the music, trying to stand.

We go out into the garden, she points at planes, she stands and sits and tries to eat the grass and leaves. She gets terribly excited by a pigeon and tries to stand and toddle after it (unsuccessfully), and sits.

We play peekaboo, she laughs lots.

She cruises round the furniture, chewing anything that might be tasty (or that definitely should not be chewed).

Life is very simple: sit, stand, toddle, chew.

You have described exactly my day with my 12 month old 😂 eats. EVERYTHING!

Singing. Just fucking singing all day. Singing about the washing up, singing about her toys, singing about the weather, singing about chores, just singing.

Poor child. Poor me.

1-1.5 is the worst. As soon as they can talk properly, things liven up.

Anything that isn’t a toy - clothes pegs, plastic tubs and wooden spoons, those wee plastic balls you put washing liquid into, dried pasta in a saucepan, water in a sink with bubbles to bath toys, remote control with batteries removed, things that stack (more plastic tubs), tin foil blankets, cushions on the floor to dive onto...

Montessori so child led.

My daughter was in that age bracket over most of lockdown, so opportunities were limited, but we did lots of water play outside, including cleaning the windows, messy play, joined in with the cebeebies baby club programme, did cosmic kids yoga, played nursery rhymes on YouTube, ran round the park, and she also spent a lot of time pulling all of her books off the bookcase and we read dear zoo approximately a million times.

I love Janet Lansbury's RIE philosophy to parenting. It took so much pressure off me when I had my first.

"RIE parenting is about letting your child find his own interests and pursue them—you're there to observe, not be the source of all entertainment while he passively sits by. “There's this fallacy that babies get bored,” Lansbury says. “But in reality, everything is too brand new and amazing to them."

It's all about letting them explore in a safe way, and being there with them while they do it. She's got lots of online resources and books but you can read a summary here:
www.thebump.com/a/rie-parenting

Hours of toddling around the park, twice a day. Get all the things out of all the drawers. Put all the things back in all the drawers. Splashy hands in the sink. Crayoning. Put them in a box or on a blanket and drag them round the floor. Books. Moving the laundry pile from one location to another. Sofa soft play: put all the sofa backs and cushions on the floor. Press all the buttons on all the things. Dance parties. Climb the stairs.

Free play - they just like ti explore the world at this age.

We did some reading, investigated some toys together and some drawing and physical/throwing around type play but generally, follow them loosely around and make sure they don't do anything life threatening!