FAQ's About Play

1- Why do kids not like independent play and how to foster that skill?

Answer: If babies and children weren’t born with the skill of independent play, the world wouldn’t have survived. Imagine the cave mom and dad who had to protect their kids from wild animals, hunt for food and struggle for basic needs like water and shelter.

ALL babies and children are born with this very important skill. We are the first generation of parents who are having to foster this skill and retrain our kids’ brains for it. Some reasons:

1- Electronics. They strip kids’ brains of the ability to do the kind of creative thinking required for play and make them dependent on outside sources for entertainment.

2- Us thinking we’re responsible for our kids’ entertainment and learning: I love that our generation of parents is so devoted to parenting with love and gentleness. To this end, we sometimes overdo it. A question I come across frequently is, “my baby is bored, how should I entertain him?” Somehow we got this idea in our heads that babies need us to entertain them and teach them everything.

3- Lack of support systems: We’re becoming more isolated as communities. Parents often have no support and feel the burden of entertaining their child in hopes of stimulating their brain development.

This post here shares how to foster independent play. https://m.facebook.com/story/graphql_permalink/?graphql_id=UzpfSTczMDEyMDMwMzpWSzoyMzk0NjUzNDAzOTY3NTMz

2- Why don’t siblings play with each other? Why do they fight so much?

Answer: Because we mistake our role in their fights and become referees. We think it’s our job to break up every fight, to come up with solutions, to then impose those solutions and to be “fair” to the “victim” sibling. A big overhaul in our perception about our role will result in a huge reduction in the sibling rivalry situation. Most of kids’ fights aren’t about a toy, or game or winning etc., they’re about gaining more “points” with the parent when we take away the points system by not becoming the referee, the fights cease a large margin. Some fighting will always happen because #siblings! This will also apply for cousins. (More on this in #siblingrivalry posts)

3- How to encourage more risky play without letting kids get hurt.

Answer: It’s fine for kids to get hurt in play (gosh I hope I don’t get sued for saying this 😬). That’s to say, we can’t protect them from every single fall. If we fear a bad injury, we can stay close and observe without being TOO close or dishing out empty warnings like “don’t do that.. you’ll get hurt!” If they truly need assistance, we can jump in and save them. Ideally- they should be in a safe environment where they can partake in some age-appropriate risky play.

4- Why are kids so competitive and such sore losers?

Answers: Kids are generally sore losers. It’s because the world revolves around them, as far as they’re concerned so it’s hard for them to understand why they’re not “winners” each time because they view themselves as winners always (don’t you just love their God-given confidence?:))

Having said that, they get over it quickly when validated. If this seems to be an intense challenge for a child then I’d say something else is going on with them too. If a child’s self-worth is tied with others’ approval then it would make sense that losing is really REALLY hard for them. Perhaps they view it as one way to win someone’s (usually their parent’ or teacher’s) approval. Perhaps the loss causes them more anguish at letting down that person “yet again”. Fostering their self-love and confidence over time with lots of validation and removing praise/criticism from their lives should make things better. (Praise in the sense of rewards- “I’ll praise you when you do something I like and I will judge you when you don’t.”)