Independant play - how do I get my children to play on their own?

[mumjoanne]

Help - I have 2 children - nearly 4 yr old boy and 2 yr old girl. Both play really nicely when I am involved but they are terrible at playing on their own. If I leave them to play so that I can get on with jobs, they manage it for about 3 minutes and then pester me to join them or they try and get involved in what I am doing. (They don't even like to watch TV on their own). I am a full time Mum and sometimes just need them to play on their own so that I can get on with things. Any ideas??? I am really struggling with this one?

I haven't read the whole thread but here is something that has helped in our household: keep all the toys seperated into containers. For some reason, having everything organised seems to help. I start off an activity with them and then leave them to it. They seem to be more able to move from one thing to another. Only a few weeks ago, everything was in a jumble, and they couldn't get on without me.

eucalyptus - at the rabbit game. Yours sound worse than mine! I know what you mean about the mess but I am beginning to make tidying up into a whole new game and it's going well so far....

Cardboard boxes are great for colouring all over too before they go to the recycling. Mind you DP made a cardboard runway and let the girls do foot painting - nice idea but he didn't take their clothes off first and then brought them up to get in my 'time off' bath before dumping a pile of stained clothing on the floor.

My son, (9.5 months), plays independently a lot when I am doing the housework. He crawls round the living room, climbs and walks everywhere he can, finds things to explore, and sometimes plays with his toys Maybe it's a personality thing though, because he has always done this. Perhaps you could start a game with your two and then leave them and see how they get on - hide and seek, or a board game that has specific rules to occupy them.

i think i used to tell mine to leave me alone

laundrylover - mine I guess have 2 years on yours; mess gets bigger as the kids do

blueshoes - not sure reading is the answer until they are much older. Both mine are fluent readers but really only want to read at bedtime , altho both have been asking me for 'workbooks' recently

mumjoanne I am sure you will have lots of fun letting your kids get bored now

Actually one of the best things we bought was a trampoline - whenever they get too noisy, bored or boisterous, we boot them outside; they often go straight out after school too, to bounce off their fidgets (see my other post about naked trampolining )- perfectly safe with a net around, might be a worthwhile investment?

Another thing I did at about this age to encourage independent play/choices was to make a "busy box".

I cut out from the Argos catalogue pictures of some of their toys/activities, or found other magazine pictures or photos. I sorted these into three categories:

1. Activities they could do independently
2. Activities that required some adult supervision
3. Activities out of the house (not major excursions - but trip to swingpark/library or feed the ducks, etc.)

I then stuck these onto card - coded with the three different colours.

Then when I got the plaintive "What can I do? Come and play with me mummy!" I would say look in your busy box and choose a yellow card. If you play nicely for 20 mins then you can choose a red card activity for us to do.

It worked well for us, and broadened their playing repertoire.

Thanks everybody for your ideas. Accepting that some of the ability to play independently is a personality thing, I will still try and give the suggestions a go and see if we can improve things a little bit. Once again thanks for your thoughts.

just wanted to add that i found that story tapes or cds are brilliant - but you might think its too much like telly. it sometimes bridges the gap when they are not paying well on their own, at least they can listen to something while they play.