Little Miss Bored?

[LionsnTigersnBears]

This is probably a thorny one, and please don't flame me, but I've got a gorgeous 6 month old dd whom I adore but who is driving me crackers. She cannot play on her own for even a few minutes and constantly grizzles with what I think is frustration when playing. It seems as if she gets bored or frustrated and then is shouting/grizzling. I pinne all my hopes on her xmas jumperoo, thinking that having her hands free and being upright would help, but as always, eighty pounds later and five minutes in, she's grizzling. I'm worried about reinforcing her behaviour by constantly picking her up when she's grizzly. What can I do to help her play better on her own?

DS is only just starting to play on his own for any length of time - he's almost 15 months. Before that, he'd be happy investigating things but would always look for me or DH.

Could she be teething hence the grizzling? She might want reassurance. I wouldn't worry too much about getting her to play alone - unless it's because you want to do housework etc? Bring her with you and just do what you can. I used to have DS sit with me to do washing - he'd chuck clothes about. With cleaning, we have a cleaner but for smaller things, he could sit and I'd give him bits to "help". Also a high chair helped as he could watch me and I could pass things to play with.

I wont flame you, but I will sympathise

My DS never 'played alone' and even now at almost 6 demands quite a lot of attention

I think their attention span in minutes is their years in age, so actually 5 minutes is pretty good.

I will say tho, she WILL get better when she can move and she WILL get better when she can communicate a little

The other thing (that I wish I had known) is actually it is ok for her to grizzle for 5-10 mins if you are busy doing something else- look at people with older kids and the 3rd and 4th child is quite often left to moan for a while and they dont seem to come to any harm at all!!

My ds was same. Urrgh really hard work. Noone will flame u it's miserable at times trying to entertain them all the time and not having 2 mins just to grap a cup of tea! It does get better. My ds was awful til he could talk. Even now at 3 he's rarely playing on his own without asking us questions or wanting our help but it's a lot easier to work out what he wants now he can say it rather than just whinging and grizzling all the time. Some babies are harder to please than others but it will pass. I like to think that babies like this are just clever and need a lot of stimulation!

thanks everyone! I was sure I was going to get it in the ear so its great to not! I don't expect her to be quietly reading Anna Karenin and smoking a pipe or anything, but oh my God the grizzling!!!! Iggly, she's not teething, she's always been like this. At least its good to know its normal. I was worried I'd got a problem here (other than the 'where the heck has my life gone one' of course :) ) I'm coping better than her Dad is. Between this and the fact that at 6 months she is still up every 3-4 hours through the night, I have a feeling that DD is destined to be an only child :(

Maybe the sleep thing isn't helping her mood! Although hard to do much about that. DS didn't sleep for long until 6 months, but at 14 months we still waiting for regular 12'hour stretches