Parents shouldn’t play with their kids. Not ever. Kids should always play by themselves. Why? Well, parents have more important things to do.
That seems to be what some readers over at parentdish thought that Lenore Skenazy meant in her recent post, Just Chute Me!
A little background: Lenore is the author of Free Range Kids (a book and website) spawned from a single event when she let her 9 year old ride the NY subway alone. As she says, “Two days later I was on the Today Show, MSNBC, FoxNews and all manner of talk radio with a new title under my smiling face: “America’s Worst Mom?”
Anyway, I’ve read (and admired) Lenore’s philosophy for awhile now. I was pretty sure she was not advocating for complete disengagement from our children in her recent article, but rather noting the importance of children entertaining themselves.
This inspired me to assemble my thoughts on boredom, because boredom quickly surfaces when kids are learning how to entertain themselves. Lenore is featuring my article at Free Range Kids today.
Boredom is good for kids. It not only forces them to entertain themselves but also ignites their creative intelligence. From this, they learn that they can solve their own problems. This is HUGE!
Children do not innately know how to entertain themselves if parents constantly intervene, interfere, or see themselves as the primary entertainers. Kids need to be left alone to learn how to entertain themselves. In fact, they need to get bored.
You can read the rest of my guest post here and join the lively discussion!
Thanks for the inspiring thoughts, Emily. I recently responded to your ideas on my blog. Thought you might like to take a look.
I like playing with my son. And he is perfectly capable of entertaining himself while I work {WAHM}. And I can remember playing games with my parents and I LOVED having that time with them. And I was also just as happy to go play by myself. I don’t see anything wrong with playing with my child…
Wonderful! Sounds like you guys have struck a balance.