Answering Your Questions About Independent Play & Trying New Parenting Approaches

parenting tips Mar 13, 2023
 

  

Note: The transcript below may not be exactly the same as the podcast because it has not been edited for accuracy

SPEAKERS : Tara Gratto

 

Tara Gratto  00:00

In this month's q&a episode, I cover two great questions. The first one is around how long do I have to try something as a parent before saying this didn't work for us? In other words, what does being consistent really mean when we are tackling something with our children, and then the second one is about how to create and build more independent play.

Hello, and welcome. I'm Tara, the founder of raising resilient children. As a longtime educator, former preschool owner and parent, I have been working with caring adults and children for over 20 years. In that time, I've been asked a lot of questions and provide a lot of support and feedback through this, I built a system for navigating the hard and messy parts of parenting with clear paths that will support you and your unique family's needs. My expertise is in social emotional well being and I'm a big fan of using picture books. I even wrote one to support teaching children about emotional regulation called The Adventures of teen brain. I know there is no cookie cutter approach to parenting and the information can be overwhelming. Let's tackle some of this by having some important conversations and digging into some different topics. All right, so this week's episode

 

Tara Gratto  01:06

is you ask? And I'll answer. I'm really excited because I got a couple really sort of layered and amazing questions. And then I got one that was like a point of reflection. So I'm actually gonna start there. So the first thing that was said to me was, it was a hard ask. So when I put out into the world, and this goes to anybody listening right now, you can submit questions on my website, at Tara gratto.ca. For slash podcast, there is a question or comment submission link there. So at any point, when you're listening to any of my episodes, if you have a question or a comment, or you want to ask a question that I'll answer live, or in a recording, you can do that. So one of the people that I talked to was really interesting, because I said, So do you have any questions? And this was sort of a, I'd love it, if you'd submit them to the question box. And this person said something very interesting. And that was, you know, what, Tara, I actually follow you and listen to you, because I don't have time to stop and think about what my questions are, that you sort of the goal of my listening to you is to keep ahead of the curve, or to have a sort of an insight with your ear to the ground. And I found it really interesting that I actually said this to someone else. I said, you know, someone said to me that my whole question and answer is actually really tricky. So I am curious to know if you also feel this way if there's more people out there, because the couple people that I sort of put this to all agreed that having questions answered is amazing. But that coming up with questions, isn't always the easiest thing to do. And that it's more about remembering at the time that the question happens. So, you know, a quick strategy there is if you have a question about behavior development, or fostering skills for social emotional well being right, so fostering skills for kindness, and feelings, and all those things, trying something and it's not working, you can write it down in your notes on your phone, or on a post it note, you don't have to be a digital person. And then you can use that later. So if something happens in the moment, and you are like, Oh, I can't remember, I can't remember, start jotting them down, start jotting your ideas down and then submit them. And, you know, that would be a great way that I could sort of answer. But I also realized that there is some layers to this, that this idea that like, asking questions on the spot can be really tricky. And that we're so busy. And I've talked about this in a few episodes now that we are so busy, that even the concept of wondering what it is that we're wondering about takes some effort. So that's an interesting, like food for thought question or comment, I should say. So I'm putting it out there. One strategy would be as you're going through your day, and something happens or you get a call from daycare or school, or whatever the case may be, jot it down. And then later when you're remembering be like, oh, yeah, this is the thing that I can submit to Tara. And I think I think that would be really cool to see if you're able to sort of make those sorts of connections, because I know that that's that's a tricky piece. All right. So my first official question, is a question that I have been asked in many different ways. But this this time was super clear. And I really appreciated that it was like a very transparent, straightforward question. And the question was, how long does it really take to learn things? So when I'm trying things with my child, or I'm doing something, how long does it actually take them to learn it? And how long does it take to relearn that kind of idea? So it's a great question, and here's why. It's a great question in my preschool that was probably the place I heard this the most. I've tried XYZ and it didn't work. So here's the tricky part about trying XYZ and not having it work consistency with children takes much longer than we typically sort of give it a whirl, right. So we typically try things for a couple of days, at most a week before tossing in the towel. And here's why that's tricky. So if we look at the studies, I'm going to throw out some statistics that are maybe not as meaningful unless we layer them with some some nuance information. So the statistics are, that it takes us between 18 and 54 days to create a new habit. And I'm sure you've seen, right 10,000 hours commit to this daily for 30 days, like there's also like, marketing and things around habit change. It's very, very sort of popular right now. But let's talk about learning. Let's talk about learning. And let's talk about it in a relatable way. So if we think about children, and we think about children who are going to school, never do we say, Okay, tomorrow, you're going to learn the whole alphabet, the next day, you're going to learn how to write the whole alphabet. The day after that, you're going to learn how to write a word, the day after that a sentence and the day after that a paragraph. And then the day after that, you're going to write a story, right? We don't have that expectation. Instead, we say, Okay, we're going to learn the alphabet, this is going to take probably several months to really sort of learn all the, the alphabet, and learning how to do the letters. And I'm not talking about sort of styles of learning here, I'm talking about literally, sort of an example of a trajectory of learning, we don't have those kinds of expectations. Yet, when it comes to behavior, and trying things, we do take that approach, right, we take the and we do this to ourselves, I think we are our worst sort of teachers to ourselves on our expectations, I was actually talking about this in the, in my together, we got this community group the other day, that's the group that you have the option of joining after you finish the building resilience through kindness program. And that's this idea that we put unrealistic expectations on ourselves, for reprogramming our brains. So our brains are awesome. They're neuro plastic, we have habits in some cases. In my case, I've had some of those habits for well over 40 years. And if I want to do a different habit, it's going to take some substantial commitment to changing it because I've been doing something for well over 40 years, so it's not going to change overnight. Now, our kids, they haven't been on the planet as long as we have. So they're don't have as much reprogramming to do irregardless though, we're still not going to go from alphabet, to writing two letter to paragraph write instantaneously. That's a trajectory. So when we start to think about 18 to 50 234 days, I think a really important part of that is sort of grounding it in something that we can relate to, which is like learning how to read and write, learning how to do math, we don't expect children to do massive complicated math computations in kindergarten, right school is a trajectory of anywhere between 12 to 14 years, if you think about junior kindergarten through high school, right. And all along that journey, we are building on the basic skills, every sort of de building on the last skill. So for learning something new, or trying something new, the more passionate we are about this. And this is something I talk a lot about in the VR TK bundle. If you give me something new about social emotional intelligence, I am going to devour it, I'm going to be super interested in it. I'm gonna, you know, really process it, I'm gonna think about it. I'm gonna think about it when I'm bored. I'm gonna think about it while I'm cutting the carrots for dinner. I'm gonna be thinking about that thing all the time. Right? Like, I'm currently listening to Adam grants book rethinking on my on my dog walks. And every time I'm doing something else, and I have a little bit of downtime, I'm doing a little processing, because I'm super passionate about what he's saying about the thought process. Right? Whereas something that maybe I don't care as much about which should be cooking. So if you if you saw my Instagram post recently, you know that I really dislike cooking and the older I get, the more I dislike it. So learning new things in cooking is not something I'm passionate about. It is not something I pay a lot of tension to. Am I curious sometimes because I'm married to a chef and I have a child who is passionate about cooking? Yeah, sure I pay attention. Am I gonna get the skill acquisition quickly so I have to cook it is a part of my everyday existence is a part of taking care of my family. We all take turns cooking, but I'm not gonna get super great at it with my attitude, or with my commitment to learning more. Right? You just can't force me to be passionate about it, even though it's something I need. And I use this example because emotional intelligence right our ability to regulate our Ewing's and learn more about our feelings and do stuff with that. And the behaviors that go with it sometimes, and the unwanted behaviors that go with it, sometimes we want to do something about that, but we may not be passionate about it. So when we think about 18, to 254 days, this starts to make a lot more sense, right? If we're super passionate about it, maybe it'll only take a month, right and only take a month of a habit change or behavioral change, because we're super passionate about it. And if we're not super passionate about it, it's probably more likely a year, which if you think about school, and you think about the subjects that you loved, and how maybe that was reflected in how well you performed in those verses, the subjects you maybe didn't love, and how well you performed in those. And then for the people who were like, Okay, I need to do well, even in the subjects that I don't like, what did that look like? What did that look like in time in terms of training your brain in terms of practicing? How much more did you have to do of that subject versus the subject you loved? Right? So

 

Tara Gratto  11:05

there's some interesting things here, when we're thinking about how long do things take. So let's translate this to parenting and to behavior and to children, right? So if we're learning tools and skills for our feelings, and we're trying something new, it's going to take time, it's going to take consistency, and sort of after a week, you can probably get an idea of whether it's clicking or not. Now, if it's not fun, and it's not engaging, guess what, it's probably not sinking in. Now, not all parenting things are going to be fun or engaging, right? So we're thinking about this, that means, oh, it's not fun and engaging, it's going to take longer, right? So what does I'd like to talk about is like, there's a difference between short term wins, and long term skills, right? So if we build in some wins, and that's what sort of I do in the VRT K bundle, like the language of kindness is all about creating these instantaneous or short term wins, that then we spend the next several weeks converting those into new behaviors, we spend the next period of time so we all want to feel good. And we all want to have that sort of quick win, but quick wins, don't solve underlying challenges unless we spend the time building the skills to support them. So hopefully, that answers your question of like, how long does it take to learn things? And when we say I'm trying something? How are we trying it? What does that look like? How long are we really trying it? Right? Have we really been trying it for sort of probably closer to three weeks to a month of consistency? And there's some other layers there? Right? How are we unintentionally reinforcing things? How are we like there's a whole bunch of sort of other pieces. But when we think about learning trajectories, and we think about how long it actually takes to learn things, there's there's layers about are we interested in it? What's the impact of it? What am I doing in the moment? What am I not doing in the moment? And how long did I really, really consistently say that I did it. So that's how long approximately it takes to learn things. Before I move on to question two, I did want to quickly Reloop I think I miss quoted Adam grants book. His book title is Think again, it's about rethinking. But his title is think again by Adam Grant. All right, so the second question that got asked was how can I get my child to play more independently? So five year old child and the parent is wondering how can we get them to play on their own a bit more? So interestingly, probably one of the most common questions that I've been asked since the outset of the pandemic is this one, especially through lock downs, and things like that, because one of the things that parents quickly learned or realized is that children right now, maybe don't have the skills they need for independent play the skills they need for quiet headspace. I think we as a current generation, a world are struggling with this. In general, we fill boredom with scrolling our phones, we feel boredom with needing to do stuff, we have a really hard time just sitting and being. I'm calling myself out here too. And that's really translated to the younger generation in sort of a tricky, a tricky way, when you're trying to think about independent play. There's also a really interesting relationship. So one of the things that I did at the outside of the pandemic is I actually wrote a white paper about this topic. And it's the idea that when children are born, there's a bit of a pressure cooker situation. So children are born and then for parental leave. A lot of parents have the mindset that they have to fit in as many opportunities as they can possibly fit. And I'm doing air quotes here on their time off, right that they need to get out and experience and really build a relationship with their child. And then if you're living in United States you might have might be sending your child to daycare or a nanny. As early as three months, and then Canada somewhere between 12 and 18 months. So there's this sort of mindset, right from the get go of like, I have to be busy with my child to experience and explore the world to build a fun and engaging relationship. And then an interesting thing happens. And that is, in many cases, kids start daycare or preschool or nanny. Now, when you step back from that you think about it for a second, what is the job of a nanny or a daycare or a care provider? Right? When we think about if we're paying money for someone to do something, we would often step back. And when I've asked parents this, right, I want my kid to be happy, healthy and happy and have a good time. Right? So one of the things that in our minds, and we're doing this unintentionally, is that, we're saying that the caring care providers job is to keep my child busy and engaged. And when we're thinking about the amount of money that goes into that, maybe one of the things we don't think about, and if you do, that's amazing, but maybe one of these we don't think about as often is, I want my care provider to facilitate boredom. I want my care provider to spend some significant energy into fostering independent play. Right, I don't think that's as common, you definitely don't see it in curriculum or anything like that. So. But here's the interesting takeaway from that idea. The interesting takeaway from that idea is, we are teaching children from an extremely young age, basically, infancy on that caring adults relationship with them is to keep them busy, right, that our job is to engage them and be fun and exciting. And they go to places to have fun and be engaged and have excitement. Right? Versus there's this sort of mundane part of life? And where are the mundane pieces of life that happened right now. So it was interesting, because at the outset of the pandemic, a lot of people were like, I really need my child to have independent play skills, I really need my child not to rely on me so much. Is it possible? So the first answer is yes, it is possible. The second piece is, this is a skill that you have to facilitate and teach because the way our world is currently running, this is not as common as it used to be. And there's a lot of reasons and there's a lot of nuance, and there's a lot of parent guilt that goes into this, right. So working parents pick up their child from daycare or meet up with the nanny, and then they want to maximize their time because they're not seeing their kid as often or as much. And there can be some feelings around that in all kinds of directions. So again, they try to maximize that time, make sure it's positive, engaging. Again, this idea of reinforcing that maybe independent play isn't finding its way into our skill building mindset. And this kind of relates to the first question that was asked, right, so how long is this going to take? And how do we build this as a skill? Right, so our first sort of place that we start with is asking ourselves, does my child have independent play skills? Is this something that has been fostered in their life? And where, right? Is it being fostered at home school? Where is it being fostered? So how can I use that? To help me with building more skills? Building on that? And how can I use in my program, which is something called front loading? So this idea of like, how do we set the stage for success? And how do we build on skills by telling kids ahead of time, what our expectations are? Now, one of the sort of pieces that I like to talk about with parents is, let's dig into the concept of independent play and what our expectations around independent play are. So there's independent play, and then there's isolated play this, this idea that maybe our expectation for independent play is that we want our children to play alone. There are a lot of children and people in general, that don't enjoy being on their own, but can play independently. So are we looking for I need space for my child's physical space? Or are we looking for I need my child to play without needing my ongoing input? So those are totally different sorts of topics when you think about them and say, okay, a lot of children don't want to play sort of in a room by themselves. And I hear some parents are like, I have this beautiful playroom and my child won't go to it. It's because they don't want to be there alone, right? They don't want to be there alone. They want to be around people. So maybe that child as a first stage needs some skills for independently playing but in your sort of same space, same sphere, where their independent play doesn't rely on your sort of interjection. So the first question you have to start with is how are you defining independent play? And then the next sort of piece of this is, how can I help my child understand what's happening, right? How have I taught them the expectations? And how am I building this as a skill? So if you're going from zero to 1000, that's one of the reasons your child isn't sort of getting on into the sort of independent play mode. And there's a great book about sort of facilitating the idea of like independent headspace and quiet time, be you by Peter Reynolds, it's a picture book. And there's some really great things in there. But one of them is like highlighting how we need to get more comfortable with being with our own thoughts. And I almost think like in today's world, it's highly unusual. I think about it myself, like I'm constantly filling boredom with scrolling or reading, or I like, the concept of just being sitting with my thoughts, like I used to 20 years ago, because there wasn't as much is is very different. So, again, is that intentional piece of how do we facilitate that knowing that, for some children, being alone with our thoughts is extremely uncomfortable because they don't ever have to do it. So if you're going from the scenario of like, always having people around and then wanting them to play independently in another room, that might be part of the challenge for you is that they're not not only learning a new skill, which is playing by themselves, they're learning about another new skill, which is playing by themselves in a room by themselves. Right, there's like two layers there.

 

Tara Gratto  21:05

So the first thing I recommend you do is like, reflect, reflect on what do you think, is currently happening with independent play? Where does it happen? Where doesn't it happen? Is it happening? Is it not happening? And what does that look like? And then the next part is, how are we facilitating the difference? So how are we communicating? And I often talk about this in lots of spheres, which is like stating the obvious, how do our children know that we are they're showing up to play with them, and it's play time with parents, versus them just thinking that we're always accessible to them, which is how most kids think most kids think, because this generation of parents is so amazing. And like, really their for their children. The reality is kids, your kids assume that you're always there, even if you don't want to be or can't be there assumption of you until you change the boundary. And if you're changing the boundary, you have to tell them is that your job is just to be on call, right? They see you as being on call. And the only way to change that on call status is to teach them otherwise. So we have to figure out what does independent play look like right now? What do we want independent play to look like? And then how have we communicated? Or how are we going to start communicating with our child about that? How are we going to sort of create these boundaries, and this is where it's really important to be aware of your parent guilt, to know that setting up boundaries around play, it doesn't make you a bad parent, it means you're facilitating and a really amazing skill. And I mean, one of the things I talk about is like creativity and all the cool things that come from boredom, and how maybe now this generation really struggles with some of that stuff, because they're never bored. Right. So maybe the way to sort of tackle your parent guilt is to say, I'm doing something to support my child's development in an area that they're not getting much support, because they're so busy all day at school, or daycare, or whatever the case may be. So that's part of like helping you navigate your parent guilt is be like, Okay, I'm going to facilitate a really important skill, it's also going to help you facilitate a really important boundary for yourself. Because if you feel like you're always on call, and a lot of the parents I talked to these days feel that way, you're exhausted and you're tired, and you're probably a bit resentful of how much your child needs or wants to play with you. So the next thing we're gonna do is we got to state the obvious, we got to state the obvious of when you're gonna play and when they're gonna play on their own, right, you're gonna set some intentional language and expectations, and you got to start small and build up. So if you're starting from scratch, you're gonna have to start with like 510 minutes, and then sort of come back to adding on time as you go. So the idea of like, okay, I'm going to play with you. And then you're going to play on your own until I come and get you. Now, here's the really important thing. One of the things about children as they don't have a great concept of time. So if you say are going to come back in five minutes, they're going to come check a lot, because they don't really understand what five minutes looks like. versus using language like, I'm going to come back and get you. And we'll finish playing XYZ game. Right? So you come back with some sort of clear intention, start and end points that will help you versus using time because time is so abstract for children. That's one of the reasons they don't sort of resonate super well with it, because they don't know. And that's where they come checking this happens to parents at night to like, call it we're not going to get up till six, and they just keep coming because they don't really understand when six is. So you did talk about hard stop and start points and like what's the follow up, right? So if you can't play right now, when can you play? If it's quiet time right now, or it's quiet play right now? Right? When are you going to play with them? So you got to create some boundaries around this is your time for playing. And then when it's time for dinner, I'm going to come read a book with you and then we're going to go have dinner together, right? So you can see how there's different ways that you could set this up so that you're Setting the Stage Right. The other thing you want to do is you want to brainstorm a list of ideas that your child really enjoys. That doesn't require you at all, doesn't require you to open things. It doesn't require you to assist, it doesn't require you to do anything. Because one of the things about setting yourself up for success is making sure that they don't need you, like authentically need you to open the container or the thing, because that's where it becomes really blurry. And those boundaries become blurred, well, I need you to open XYZ, right. So they come with the thing that needs to be opened. And it's okay if they're not ready for certain things, right, there can be adult and Kid things and just kid things. So make sure you sit down and brainstorm a list of what things your child can do all by themselves. And then if you haven't caught my episode about choices, one of the things I talked about in there, and also my episode with Tara Stewart about sort of declutter and stress and mass and kids, if you have too many options available and independent play time, your child is less likely to play because they get distracted, and they move from item to item and they just can't really pick a thing to do. And I've seen this tons of times in my preschool, when there's like too much overwhelm, you can't decide on what you want to do. So if you want to have sustained independent play, it's better to hone in on like two or three things maximum that they can do. Now, here's the key to success in this whole framework. So you're front loading it, you're creating some boundaries, you're going to use words to state the obvious, you're going to come up with some ideas for setting up the play. But here's how it really works. Once you set the boundary, and you go back, that is where you have to thank your child, and reinforce them doing the thing. Right, so let's say you need to do some work. So you might say something like, Okay, I need to do some work at my computer, when I'm done, I'm going to come to you. And we can play Lego together before dinner. And then when you're finished at your computer, you go to your child and you make sure you play the Lego. And then you thank them, thank you so much for giving me some space and for playing all on your own until we can play together. I love this. Right? So you want to reinforce that they gave you the space that they used their time that they you know, played independently, there's all kinds of different ways you could reinforce a situation. But the idea here is that you set up the boundary, you talked about how you would end the boundary, and then you followed up on the boundary. So the people who are like, well, what if they come, that's where you'd say, Oh, I'm still working, I will come play Lego with you when I'm done. And you just redirect them back. And that will take a couple of times until they're used to it. Because if they're not used to you not being on call, that's what they're going to do for sure, they're gonna keep doing that. And then maybe you're okay with them. You know, being in your space, you'd be like, Okay, I'm gonna work at the computer, you can do these two things quietly. If you want to do something noise, you have to be over here. And that's how you can start to introduce playing in different areas. So these are the two things you're allowed to do in my sphere. And these are the things that you can only do outside of my sphere, right? So you're giving them the option. So if you think one of the reasons that they're not playing independently is because they want to be around people. What are they able to do around you? And what other things are they not able to do around you because they're too noisy, or whatever the case may be that they have that option to go to the thing. And then if they get noisy, you can be like, Oh, it sounds like you need to do this activity. The only activities we can do here are these two, right? That kind of idea. But it's also like, thank you so much. Wow, you did so many cool things. When you're on your own, you must feel so proud. Can I give you a big hug? I'm so excited to see you again. Right. I really appreciate you having this quiet time, so that I can have some quiet time, quiet time so important for our brains, right? There's all kinds of conversations you can have here. But if we don't loop back on the positive of them doing the hard thing which was playing on their own, I know that sounds counterintuitive. You're like they should just want to play on their own. But you're building a new skill. And when we're building a new skill, we want to know that we did something right. We want to be told how awesome and amazing we are. And that's one of the things that we can do. So hopefully that's a bit helpful on how you can start to build in some skills and tools for independent play and sort of thinking about why it's a skill that we actually have to foster versus maybe you think about your child and you're like I just played it's because childhood has changed dramatically. Thanks so much for listening. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss future episodes. You can also submit questions or comments to me at Tara gratto.ca forward slash podcast. I'd love to hear from you. Until next time, have a great one.

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