Growing at Home - Teaching Independence
With summer well underway and the kids having already been home a surprisingly long time, everyone has had to come up with ways to be creative and fill their children’s time. Self-entertainment is an important skill for children to develop that will be useful long after Covid19 has ended. The ability to self-entertain helps our children to focus, be creative, and independent.
Early Bird Mom and explains some tips to encourage independent free play:
Give your child some attention and inspiration as you send them to play alone.
Try not to interrupt their free play, give them space.
Don’t jump to answer them if they call for you, this will help them learn how to respond to their own needs.
Admire their results. If your child wants to show you what they created, complement their work, then have them naturally return to their task.
Don’t worry about messes, but do teach your kids to clean up after themselves.
To avoid the “Mom, I’m bored” whine, have your kids make a list of activities that they are to go through before they come to you complaining about being bored. I know a few parents who use this method and whenever their child comes to them about being bored, the parents respond with “go to the list” or “have you done everything on the list?” This helps their kids to develop independence by answering their own questions and coming up with their own solutions.
I also know parents who use this method for chore charts; if their kids ask to do something they respond with “have you completed the chore chart?” This teaches their children to own their responsibilities. If you think about it, before the kids complain about being bored, shouldn’t they make sure their rooms are clean and chores are completed? Chores will also encourage them to keep themselves self-entertained to avoid being assigned more tasks.
Very Well Family and Active For Life have suggestions that your kids can add to their lists of self-entertaining activities. Some examples to get you started:
Cook a meal
Have a dance party
Build a fort
Brush the dog
Write a letter
Call a friend
Create something new
Test a science experiment
Camp outside
Invent something
I hope these tips help inspire your children to be creative and independent, wishing you a happy rest of summer!