I’ve always been huge on independence – it’s something I work on a lot in my job as a special education teacher, and it’s something I’ve always really wanted to promote in my children. I believe that it’s important to be intentional about teaching independence and encouraging independent play because the older your kiddo gets, the harder it is to get them to realize that they’re capable of entertaining themselves!

Jackson, like any two-year-old, isn’t really great at playing independently yet. But we are working on it, and he is getting better each and every day. I thought I’d share a few of the ways that we intentionally work to increase his ability to play by himself – it’s a work in progress, but we’re getting there!

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1) We buy toys that encourage creative play. We always try to avoid toys that only have one use or that aren’t very child-led – Jack is a lot more likely to be entertained by a toy when he can get creative with it and play with it in a bunch of different ways. Right now, his favorite toys are a set of Frozen figurines, his train set, and anything with wheels.

2) We back off. If we’re playing with Jackson and we notice that he’s playing mostly without needing our engagement, we start to back off. Sometimes that just means we slowly scoot away and start doing something else, sometimes we just get up and leave the area entirely. If we do it too quickly, he’ll often notice and ask us to come back but if we’re careful about it, he won’t even realize we’ve left!

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3) We ask him to clean up. Okay, this one is kind of a reverse psychology strategy, but it never fails that if we tell Jackson he needs to clean up his toys, he ends up playing with them instead just to avoid cleaning. Often, I’ll tell him that it’s time to clean up way before it’s actually time to clean up so that I can give him some time to play by himself. It always amazes me how much he wants to play independently as soon as he’s avoiding doing something!

4) We let him make a mess. Jackson loves to play with things that create all sorts of chaos – kinetic sand and a shoebox full of old Pokemon cards are his favorite these days. It’s annoying to clean up the mess, but sometimes the messiest toys are the ones he’ll play with for the longest! These are perfect toys to pull out when I really need to get something done because they basically guarantee I’ll have at least 15-20 quiet minutes. And for a two-year-old, I can’t ask for much more than that!

5) We praise independent play. When Jackson does a good job of playing by himself for any length of time, I’ll make sure to make a comment – something as simple as, “I love how nicely you’re playing today, Jack” is a great way to reinforce independent play. I try not to interrupt if I can tell that he’s deeply engrossed in something, but I do make an effort to at least mention how proud I am of him when I notice that he’s done a good job of playing by himself.

6) We just say no. This one is definitely the hardest, but I think it’s also vitally important. Sometimes when Jackson asks us to play with him, we simply tell him we’re too busy and can’t play. He usually whines and complains, but if we stick to our guns he almost always finds some other way to entertain himself. If he’s particularly pushy, I’ll tell him that I need to work until my timer beeps and set a timer on my phone. Often, I’m able to stop the timer before it actually goes off because he’s happy in playing with something by himself within a couple of minutes. Anytime I feel guilty about telling Jack I can’t play with him, I ask myself how many times I remember my parents getting down on the floor and playing with my toys – it rarely happened! And I had a perfectly happy childhood and a wonderful relationship with my parents! It’ll be okay!

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Independent play is a skill that is so important for kids to develop – it’s a hard one to teach, but you can’t ignore it! We definitely spend a lot of time playing with Jackson on a day-to-day basis, but at least once or twice a day we try to make sure we’re encouraging him to spend a bit of time alone. Right now he can usually only play alone for about 15 minutes at a time, but sometimes we get a good 30-minute stretch! Over time, we’ll work on increasing his ability to entertain himself and increase his independence even more as he gets older.

How do you encourage independent play in your children?