Independent play is a crucial skill for all kids to learn. When you can play independently, you don’t need to rely on other people to entertain you, meaning you’re less likely to be bored, especially during the weekends and holidays! When kids know how to play without someone else needing to be around, or provide the entertainment, they’re going to grow up a lot more self-sufficient and with a lot more patience!
Indeed, when kids know how to play by themselves, they’ll become better able to stimulate their brains, through which they’ll be able to grow skills like their focus, coordination, imagination, and creativity. No longer will they just look to you to entertain them - they’ll have all the tools at their disposal already!
But encouraging kids to flex their creativity, and to get used to feeling a bit bored here and there, can be difficult. They might pester you to entertain them, or ask for more screen time minutes during the week, but don’t give in! Instead, use the tips below to get them to use their minds and make independent playtime a staple of your household schedule.
Remove Instant Gratification From Their Lives
Kids often want things right now, and even when they get it, they move on quite quickly to something else. Quite honestly, that’s just part of being a child. They don’t understand the value of hard work, effort, or even the passage of time in the same way we do. That’s why removing this sense of instant gratification from their lives is a smart thing to try.
In doing so, you get life to slow down, maintain a better pace, and the kids can get used to living with feelings they might not quite like. In this case, the feeling in question is boredom.
It’s OK to be bored, and it’s OK to need to find something to do to beat the boredom. If you don’t just hand them an iPad to watch something on, and instead tell them to go and find something fun to do, they’re going to learn how to constructively deal with ‘negative’ feelings like these.
Tell Them They Need to Play By Themselves
If you can’t seem to encourage your kids to try out independent play in any other way, tell them squarely and firmly that that’s what they need to do. Sometimes kids need to be told plainfly and obviously what it is you want from them, and if they’re pestering you and making you feel frustrated, take a deep breath, count to five, and then let them know what needs to happen now.
The more a child knows what you want, in specific terms, the easier it’s going to be to carry out the action you’re looking for. Kids can sometimes mistake what it is we want when we’re not clear about what we’re thinking, so make it certain that independent play is part of growing up in your household.
Once you’ve told them what it is they need to do, you can check in on them in 15 to 20 minutes and see how they’re getting on. Checking in gives you the chance to set your mind at rest over what your kids are getting up to, but doing so infrequently prevents your kids from getting too distracted by your presence as well.
Give Them Traditional Puzzles to Solve
Kids tend to love puzzles. Put something a little challenging in front of them and they might just spend all afternoon trying to work it out, especially if you say you couldn’t do it yourself!
When you engage their brain in such a rich way, they may even fall in love with solving puzzles and start to play independently without even realizing that that’s what they’re doing. We learn and adapt best when we don’t know that’s what we’re doing!
Kid friendly rounds of solitaire are a good thing to start with, but hand out word searches and even simple crosswords for them to attempt as well. Tell them they need to put all their focus onto the puzzle in front of them, and if your kids are competitive, maybe even encourage them to solve it as fast as they can.
Buy More Manual Toys
Manual toys, such as Barbie dolls, animal figurine playsets, and LEGO sets, are the kinds of toys that make independent playtime easy. If your child can take these toys in hand and give them characters and invent a world of their own to play with them in, they’re not going to turn to screens, video games, or you to entertain them as much.
Toys that come with voice boxes and a set of phrases to cycle through also count here, as these can fuel the imagination without making it next to impossible for your child to think for themselves. Really, when you give the kids the best tools for expanding and exploring their imagination, they’ll be more than happy to give it a go!
Sit Together But Do Separate Things
This is a great way to teach your kids that different people like to do different things. As they get older, knowing this will prevent them from walking over boundaries or being intrusive into their friends’ lives. Even though you love each other and like spending time together, sometimes you need to have some private time, and that’s OK!
Of course, you’re still allowed to talk to each other and interact, but make sure that’s where the crossover between your activities stay. You’re teaching them to be a bti more independent, even when trying to have fun, so you don’t want to accidentally rope them into what you’re up to when they start showing some interest!
This way they’ll soon learn that playing independently happens even when other people are sharing the same space. If you lead by example and make it clear that you’ve got your own thing and they’ve got theirs, this will become a normal part of life and won’t be hard to adjust to in future.
Praise Them When They Do Play Independently
If you find the kids spending some time doing their own thing, and they don’t usually like to do this, give them some praise. Just like any other behavior in life, independent playtime needs to be celebrated in order to be reinforced. The best kind of encouragement is a positive reaction, so make sure your kids see you giving them one.
Of course, it may feel a little weird to praise your child for spending time on their own, but that’s not what you want to focus on here. Instead, focus on that sense of independence and praise them for their willingness to try things (especially new things) on their own.
You can also ask them about what they’re up to and try to show interest in what they’re doing. When kids see a smile on their parents’ faces, or they hear a genuine question about something they like, they’ll quickly understand that the behavior they’re showing is something you want to see.
Independent play can be quite easily encouraged - you just need to be creative and firm about the way you do it! Get the kids involved in other things, and be sure to draw up some boundaries about when you need time to yourself. If the kids always want to be entertained, tell them in no uncertain terms that they’ll sometimes have to be the one to make things fun!
