The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

Hello and welcome to Raising Good Humans podcast.

Happy, Happy New Year.

I just am so excited to be here with you to start the new year, to have continued conversations

and like laugh with you and get deep and think about raising our humans and ourselves.

And I am wishing everyone the most meaningful 2026. I love that you're here. Please stay here.

And let's do this. Today we are talking about independent play. My guest, Lizzie Assa, is an education expert and her new book, But I'm Bored, Discover the Power of Independent Play to Raise Confident, Resilient Kids, is coming out.

And what we're talking about is, of course, I think people are pretty sold on how important independent play is.

But we're going over kind of what are the pitfalls, reminding everybody or letting you know what incredible

skills independent play develops. And more importantly, how? How do we help our kids build this

skill? Because it's, you know, hard to distinguish between independent play and ignoring.

And how can we use play prompts to set up independent play?

What do we do when our kids keep coming to us? How do we create like a real quiet time and make

it a thing? And how to deal with some of the challenges that come up. You might know Lizzi Asa from her

Instagram workspace for children. And I thought this was a great conversation to lead up to when you're

home more during vacation because it's an opportunity to feel more motivated for promoting

independent play. So first, just because it sounds like everybody knows what it is,

but we maybe don't really know what it is,

can you just define independent play?

Yes.

For me, independent play is when play is truly led by your child.

So that means the ideas come from your child as opposed to when we typically

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