How to Get Your Kids to Play Independently without you having mom guilt
Have ‘Mom Guilt’ ever messing up with your mind?
Yeah, that feeling that we all felt when we have chores or meetings or works to do, but our kids keep on clinging to our knees… ????
We can’t help it… but the easiest way to get our work done is always by giving our kids an iPad or just switching on the TV.
No, I’m not judging you.
Because that is totally me! Ha! ????????♀️
A Bit of Assurance for You
One new thing that I learned was, well, guess what?
Our kids don’t need us to be 24/7 playing with them.
Sure, they are clingy cute little ones, but they also need their own time.
The tricky part is, how do we make sure that our kids feel loved especially when they start to throw their tantrum when we are just beginning to start our work?
The secret is, fill up their Emotional Bucket.
Emotional Bucket?
It’s like, every children has a bucket of love to be filled.
Once their bucket is filled and overpouring with love, they will not need you anymore ????
So how do we fill our child’s Emotional Bucket then?
You know what? I saw with my own kids, once their Emotional Bucket is filled, oh boy, I can go and do my work without much interruption ????
Filling up a kid’s Emotional Bucket is so important so that not only we busy moms don’t feel that mom guilt, but also because when our kid’s Emotional Bucket is filled, they are feeling loved and appreciated and worthy and all that happy feeling ????
So how do we fill up our kid’s Emotional Bucket?
It’s all about spending undivided quality playtime with them, even just for a tiny 10-15 minutes block of time.
Wait, what? Time?
Yes, spend just a bit of time.
A Play Specialist once shared how to do this :
- Before we start our work/chore/meeting in the morning, set aside 10-15 minutes before we begin our work
- This little chunk of time, make it as a ‘special playtime’ with your kids
- Invite them to play, such as “Starting today, at this time, we will be having a special time together before Mommy gets to work. What would you like to play?”
- Block your time.
- Put the phone away.
- Spend undivided attention to them during this time.
- Once the time is up, gently let your little ones know that Mommy has to get to work, and we can continue our play later today, or tomorrow at the same time.
Looks simple and achievable, right?
Do You Have Any Simple Play Ideas?
You might ask, “But I don’t have any idea what to play with my kids. We have been on TV for months right now.”????♀️
Well, in that case, let’s check out some of these super simple play ideas; that if you don’t have the stuff needed, you can just replace it with anything available within your reach :
- Create a Dinosaur’s house using building block – You can replace Dinosaurs with dolls, or pompoms, or candies (candy house sounds fun!)
- Let’s play pretend cook using pompoms – Pompoms can be replaced with leftover pasta, or recycled papers, or leftover beans
- Let’s draw mommy’s face on any blank papers – Let’s pretend that both of you are playing artist!
- Wastebasket ball- Crumple some papers, and play throw them into the wastebasket
- Play shadow- Pull the curtain to black out your room and switch on your phone’s light. Tadaaa!
- Print any of our ‘click-and-print’ printable activities and do it together with your kids ????
To Recap
To help you go around about how do we actually got to get our kids to play independently without us having to bear the feeling of mom guilt?
It’s by filling up their emotional bucket; which means making them feel loved.
There are many ways to feel our kid’s emotional bucket.
One of the way is to block one solid time for them and spend that time playing with them, or doing anything they want to do with you.
I hope this post helps you.
Let me know if you have try the tips!
