How to you get 'one to one' time when there are 2 or more children?

[Othersideofthechannel]

DD (4) never wants her brother (nearly 6) to play with us when we are playing dolls house or mummies and babies.

She will quite happily get on with her own things while I play with him. DS rarely plays alone so he always wants to join in on the games DD invents. I totally understand where she is coming from. She rarely gets any one on one time. Plus he tends to have lots of ideas to bring to the game and she likes to have a bit of time where she decides everything. As an adult I can let her do this but I can't expect this from DS.

I am uncomfortable with excluding him when he obviously wants to play. Can't find a solution to this problem at the moment.

What do you do in a similar situation?

Send dp and ds out at weekends
so you and dd can enjoy one-to-one?

That's what we intend to do anyway.

I suppose we need to find something they like doing that she isn't interested in.

At the moment they go on bike rides but if she sees them do that she wants to go too. So I end up going on a little bike ride with her.

I suppose it'll get easier when she is older and understands that if we use that time to go out on our bikes, we won't have time to play dolls house uninterrupted.

Anymore ideas?

DH isn't around every weekend so I'd like to find a way to solve this problem that doesn't rely on him if possible.