If your child is spirited and has a difficult time concentrating on most things for any length of time, knowing other children play alone feels like some sort of wondrous magic. You doubt whether you're doing things right: do you talk too much? Did you intervene too quickly when they were frustrated as an infant?
And then another child comes along and without anything extra or different, they perform that wondrous magic in front of you all day long, and you learn it's nothing about your parenting that's made it harder for your eldest child to engage in cheerful and creative play.
It's hardwired.
Environment makes a huge difference, of course, but no amount of open-ended toys or quiet backing away from a play scene will flip the switch on independent creative play if your child just plain finds it difficult or confusing.
I treasure the way that Birdie naturally falls into creative, narrative play. At nearly 5, A has only started to engage in independent play - although he finds it very hard some days to fall into the flow of play, and his play doesn’t look like one might expect. Yesterday, for example, while Birdie made houses and train stations out of blocks, A spent 2 hours telling himself a story aloud while trying to fit himself into a cooler bag. That was the deep and valid play work of his day, no less useful or worthy than building trains.
Parenting a spirited or differently wired child requires us to refocus our lenses and change our expectations of how our days will flow, and how our children will learn through play. It requires great patience and presence on our part to let go of our ideas about what our child ‘should’ be doing or how they ‘should’ be playing.
If you're wanting to help your spirited or differently wired kid develop a stronger relationship with independent play, here's a few things I recommend:
Provide a range of non- traditional loose parts to inspire play. Rubber bands, small cloth bags, paperclips, and glue sticks might inspire more creative games than wooden figures or blocks. Following the Reggio Emilia approach and providing a child with an array of objects and art materials that spark their curiosity and encourage them to explore can lead most children into some sort of independent play over time.
Model different kinds of play. I felt very uncomfortable doing this with A when he was a toddler because I didn’t want to overlay adult ideas of play onto his fresh imagination, but what I didn’t know was that he needed more scaffolding to understand how and why to play in some scenarios. Even a lot of this type of play modelling will not lead some kids into peaceful independent play, but giving children an understanding of how different things might be used can jump-start independent play for some spirited or differently wired children.
Make a collaborative play plan for preschool age or older children. While planning play may sound like the opposite of fun, kids who struggle to stay focused on a game or play activity- even if they are enjoying it - can benefit from making a plan and having adult support to keep redirecting themselves to the game. This idea is based on the groundbreaking program called Tools of the Mind, which helps children develop self-regulation skills. Before an independent play session, work with your child to sketch out a rough plan of what they will do, and help them to write it down. When they are wandering around, saying they are bored, or expressing upset about playing alone, help them revisit the play plan and see what support they need to reconnect with their ideas. Could you draw something for them, or build a tower to get them started?
Save activities your child can focus on, regardless of whether or not you view them as ‘play’, for building capacity for independent playtime. For all children, independent play takes practice. Bridging into independent play with the activities that your child can focus on helps. Whether that’s putting objects from one bag to another, listening to stories read aloud, or climbing on chairs, try incorporating some element of that activity into a session of independent play.
Remember that ‘play’ takes many forms, and lots of those forms involve things that aren’t toys. My spirited, differently wired child can play for a long time with boxes, bags, modelling clay, and a spanner, but has never set up a train track independently or expressed any interest in most things sold as ‘toys’. Viewing the kind of play that comes naturally to most kids as the best or most valid kind of play makes it very likely that you’ll overlook the independent play that your child is actually doing. Challenge yourself to accept lots of different forms of play.