Hi Kat,

Yes, this comment is really old but I was just coming back to this blog post for the same reason! I have been setting my son down for independent play since birth and he did absolutely fine with it for awhile, but he’s now 6 months and for the last month he just no longer tolerates it! He starts fussing and crying after an extremely short time no matter what I do, and it is extremely hard for me to get anything done. All the fussing and crying is driving me batty! So, yeah, I hope you found a solution eventually, and I just wanted to chime in as another mother whose baby doesn’t seem to cooperate with this advice.

Hi, this is interesting as I now realise we have created a very similar situation with my almost 18 month year old boy. However, if I tell him I’m going to cook dinner now he will immediately follow me, then whine and cry pulling at my leg until I pick him up. He then doesn’t want to be put down so then I have a clingon which isn’t very productive if I need to cook with two hands! 🙂 I used to try and tell him that I was cooking dinner but the crying was unbearable and he got so upset and didn’t give up. Is it too late for us now with him being 18 months? I’ve read another of your articles re clingy babies and I agree that if they need to be close to us, they need us…

Hi Beth! Thanks for so candidly sharing your process! I love how you’ve embraced this approach. Rolling the ball back to him is fine. This isn’t about “never” or “always.” It’s an awareness that it is positive and encouraging for children to be trusted to follow their own inner-direction and that our play choices tend to shift our child’s direction quite a bit. Children don’t need to do this all the time, but it does help if they have some time each day to be the sole director of their play. So, the way that might look is when he rolls the ball, you engage with him in a less active way by saying…”Ah, you rolled that to me. Thank you!” As adults we are naturally inclined to make a lot of assumptions.. “Oh, this means I’m supposed to roll it back…” When the child may have another idea altogether. But once you’ve introduced this game, it’s fine to continue it, of course, because that is likely your child’s expectation.

This post might interest you, if you haven’t yet read it: https://www.janetlansbury.com/2014/10/your-presence-is-enough/

Mostly, I want to encourage you on your journey!

Janet,
One distinction that I think is really important that I didn’t quite hear you articulate in your response to Eileen is that you are not advocating ignoring a clear communication from a child! If a child who has learned the game of rolling a ball back and forth tried to initiate that game, I am sure you would encourage us to respond lovingly and authentically by either accepting their invitation to play or telling them something like “I see you really want to play the rolling the ball game with me! I love playing with you, but right now I’m busy.” You are just advocating not taking over the child’s play and demonstrating the “correct” way to play with an object out of knee jerk habit. Children learn so much more about an object and play with it for so much longer when they aren’t shown how to play with it, as Alison Gopnik’s research shows. I don’t think you are advocating not responding, you are advocating a mindful response that springs from being sensitively attuned to the child, and not from assuming either that you know what the child’s agenda is, or that your agenda is more important than the child’s as far as play is concerned.

Independence for young children doesn’t mean pushing them to do things on their own, it means noticing and respecting what they are actually already doing as full, real people with agendas of their own and allowing them to have those agendas and not getting in the way! I love that you talked in your podcast response about how we don’t leave children alone or say no to an activity because we are trying to push them or force them to be independent, but rather because we genuinely need to do something else and aren’t available in that moment. We trust they can handle that. But we aren’t manipulating or pushing them into being anything or as Eileen put it “worrying about independence”.

I love your work! Thank you so much and keep it coming!
Emily

Sounds good, Sarah. Thank you.