Self Entertainment

People are always amazed at my children's ability to entertain themselves. It seems few children are capable of playing independently or together for more than 10 minutes at a time from what I hear.

The other day I read in a book that children are not born into the world able to entertain themselves, they need to be entertained and expect to be. Until we teach them to entertain themselves. This is really something they need to learn and work at, it doesn't come naturally.

That's exactly it. James didn't just pop out and want to look at a map for 45 minutes at a time. As soon as Matthias was born James didn't haul him off to sit on a blanket for 2 hours and play camping. These skills have been growing over the years because of all the free, unstructured time I force upon them. They really started getting good at it when James was just over 3 and Matthias was 15 months or so.

I've been thinking about this recently as Hannah has been whining any time someone isn't looking at, holding, or talking to her. Her training has begun. And just last week I was able to fold laundry for 30 minutes while she cooked in her kitchen (which she LOVES). It was an amazing feat. Soon she'll be toddling after the boys and ruining all their games.