Struggles with Independent Play

Respectful Parenting: Janet Lansbury Unruffled

JLML Press

Kids & Family, Parenting

4.7 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Self-directed play is a gift that keeps giving with profound benefits for every aspect of our children's development. As an added bonus, nurturing our child's ability to self-entertain affords us the occasional much-deserved break. So, cultivating independent play and establishing it as a habit is well worth the effort. Unfortunately, no matter how early we start noticing, valuing, and then encouraging our children's inner-directed play choices, there can be setbacks along the way. In this episode, Janet responds to emails from parents who describe their own setbacks. One parent shares how her 14-month-old flits from toy to toy, then suddenly announces she's "done!" and cries until the parent removes her from the play area. She's also begun demanding to be “done” with car rides and walks in the stroller. Another parent shares that her 8-month-old, who previously reveled in his play time and entertained himself for long periods, has lately become angry whenever there's a gate between them, even when she's doing chores right next to him on the other side. Janet shares insights for encouraging self-directed play and suggests ways these parents might help their kids get over their respective humps.

Learn more about Janet's "No Bad Kids Master Course" at: NoBadKidsCourse.com.

Her best-selling books “No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline without Shame” and "Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting" are available in all formats at Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and free at Audible (https://adbl.co/2OBVztZ) with a trial subscription.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Janet Lansbury, welcome to UnRuffled.
0:06.3	Today, I'm going to be doing something that feels like I haven't done for a long time,
0:11.7	which is talk about children who are, in one case, an infant and then coming out of the
0:18.7	infant stage into the early part of the second year.
0:23.6	And so while this is focused on younger children than many of you have, I believe that some
0:28.7	of the ideas I'm going to bring up will apply to toddlers, preschoolers, and maybe even older
0:34.3	children because this will be about boundaries around the attention that we're able to
0:40.2	give to our children.
0:42.8	And as early as possible, I recommend starting to take care of ourselves in this relationship
0:50.2	with our children so that this becomes normalized for them.
0:55.4	And also, so that they have the space they need to flourish as children who can entertain
1:03.3	themselves, who learn through play, the way that children do, enjoy their discoveries,
1:11.6	their me time, getting to create their own activities, all things that serve our children
1:18.1	well for life.
1:21.9	Okay, so I have two questions that I've received from parents around play and establishing
1:29.6	play in the beginnings, or at least around the end of the first year and beginning of
1:35.4	the second year.
1:37.0	And the issues that can come up that seem to get in the way of this working and what we
1:42.9	can do about them, what we can do to cultivate this time for our children.
1:48.2	This really important time for them to spread their wings and have a healthy sense of control
1:54.1	and agency in their world following their interests.
1:58.9	Okay, here's the first email.
	...

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