13 month old - independent play?

[dolster]

My DD (nearly 13 months) seems to be pretty much incapable of any independent playing when I'm around. With her dad and her nanny (4 days a week) she will play quite happily with them at a distance but with me, I have to be sitting on the floor right next to her, interracting with her and her toys, otherwise she cries. It's got to the point that even if she crawls half way across the room, she cries if I don't go with her! It means that I can't do any housework - she needs my full attention. I have little play areas in the kitchen, living room and bathroom but unless I'm sitting right there with her, she's not interested. I don't really mind this, as, as long as I'm sitting next to her she's really good and I don't have any other children so I can give her my full attention. I just wondered if anyone had any tips on how to encourage independent play at this age - just so that I can get on with making breakfast/lunch/dinner and doing the odd bit of tidying without her getting upset. Or whether this is a normal stage and I should just put up with it for now?

Put her in the high-chair in the kitchen with a few toys on the tray while your doing lunch, tidying etc, and natter away to her and tell her what your doing, I used to do that with my boys and it kept them happy, unfortunately I talk to myself now as they're at school lol

Ha! This sounds familiar!

My DD is now 2.5 and she still does this sometimes. It is partly because you are extra special mummy, she doesn't get so demanding on my DH if he is with her all day. It may also be because you respond and go to her, if you were really resistant to her cries she would get the message and amuse herself. I am more easily pulled to the play-with-toddler-leave-house-to-disintegrate side of this coin than the condition-toddler-not-to-want-me-and-tidy-up side.

13 months is quite young for independent play for anything other than a 5-10 min stint and it really depends on the child as some love being talked to while others get absorbed in their own thing. Small children needs lots of verbal and social interactions with parents to learn, they can't be by themselves all the time. Maybe after 4 days of being less closely stimulated she really wants you to play with her and knows you are the person who does it most willingly.

If you enjoy it don;t feel guilty or defective, play with her and both have fun!

thank-you both! I guess she just wants lots of attention from her mummy which is fair enough. I just worry because I don't want to 'spoil' her, I want her to understand that I can't be right there whenever she demands it but at the same time I don't really want to leave her to get into a pickle. It's tough because she seems much more anxious and prone to tears around me than around her dad but i guess that must be because of the stronger attachment and stronger separation anxiety she has with me.

You can't spoil a 13 month old by being with her and interacting with her. The most messed up kids I have met (working as a teacher) are the ones who parents don't pay them enough attention. We have a family friend whose first born is now 4 and well on the way to being a nightmare child due to being ignored and left to play alone most of the day. They spend the whole day finding things to wind up their mum and general be disruptive as a way of getting noticed and attention. The nicest, calmest kids I know have parents who respond in a timely way to their cries and gives them lots of attention, talking and "floor time" together.

I think she is still too young to understand you are actually an person separate and independent from her, she actually needs you to suddenly turn up when she cries to make her feel secure. I am useless at objectively comparing how much crying/fussiness my DD has around me compared to DH. I feel it more than DH when she cries so I think I sometimes interpret it as worse/more urgent tears when actually it's the same.

Thank you so much - that's such a re-assuring message and such sensible words! I love my time with her and I don't resent playing with her at all so I'll just carry on as we were.

I would agree with MamaLaMoo - my son is 2.9 and has only recently started to play at all independently, and then it is very much on his terms rather than ours (i.e. when he wants to, not when I want to cook supper). I have also gone down the route of giving attention early on in life to promote independence later on - children vary hugely, I know many children who happily play alone by this age but I have just chosen to think about this as my son needing more reassurance to build his sense of independence, which I'm sure will come in time. It means I can do almost nothing else when he is around though, and it is sometimes hard to ignore the subtle comments from PIL etc that this is because I have spoilt him.