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I was just wondering.. how much time do you spend playing with your toddler? And how involved do you get? Especially interested to hear from stay at home moms.
My DD just turned 3. She has always been great for playing on her own, then when she gets bored or wants some cuddles we do an activity together, but lately, i admit i really don't play with her. I kind of oversee her coloring or set up some craft, but then drift off to chores or something. We do bake together and do outdoorsy stuff together and shes probably spoilt with outings atm.
However just in the last week, her daddy has been playing with her before work, and although its brilliant, she then starts the day grumpy that he has gone and has started asking me to play. High energy imagination games first thing in the morning is just boring for me (as terrible as that sounds)!! Plus there have been times i start to play, but then she expects me to play that same game for the whole day.. Is it all just part of motherhood? Just wondering what you all do?

Not an SAHM perspective, but when my DD was 3, the answer was, "Pretty much whenever I was home and she was awake." Or, if you prefer, "Enough to draw complaints from DW from time to time," since my perceived obligation to entertain DD sometimes meant other things I needed to get done weren't. Working all day and then immediately going into a childcare role for the rest of the evening and weekend can be pretty stressful.

It was about this age that I started recognizing that I needed to put in certain limits, because my patience has one, and exceeding my patience on a daily basis wasn't going to be good for either one of us. So...

- No dolls.
- I would make allowances for other activities she wanted to do that I was less enthusiastic for, but only for a certain amount of time, and we'd have to go do something else. Kids at that age like to switch up activities anyway, so no worries.
- I introduced her to things I enjoyed doing, to see what would stick. The more things we both enjoyed, the more profitable for both of us any play time would be.

The benefits of imaginative, free play cannot be overstated. Here's the simplified version:
http://www.livescience.com/15541-top-5-benefits-play.html
And the long version:
http://www2.aap.org/pressroom/playFINAL.pdf

In your situation, my reasonable boundary would be, "Not until I've had my morning coffee." Feel free to substitute whatever morning ritual works for you.

And remember... she'll only be 3 once, and it'll be over before you know it.

hiya Smidge!

i wasn't a SAHM, though i was home all the time - i work from home. we had a nanny for a bit (a young, energetic uni student who came in for several hours every day,) but even with her there, it was often a very long day for both DD (now 5) and myself.

so like Dude, i really set some limits, not only with the kid, but with the nanny, my husband and virtually everyone who looked after her for significant time. it was a variation on "house rules" - every adult set their own expectations and was clear about them. DD learned what she could get away with in each person's care and everyone felt free to take a break if they needed it. she really was unbelievably exhausting - i thought i was just a wimp for the longest time!

i'm personally kind of terrible at pretend play, so one of my tricks was to co-opt the kid right in with whatever i wanted to do. she did lots of kitchen prep and vinegar-based cleaning around that age! she actually did a little of my work, too - on slower projects i'd sometimes hop her onto my lap and get her opinion on advertising layouts. (which i would not always take, obviously - but that was good, too - we had great conversations about the colour wheel and page balance!)

i'm not sure if this will work for your situation, but maybe you could shift Dad-time to after work? if you handed your bean over at the end of the day for a snuggly bedtime, you might save yourself the morning aggravation? if that doesn't work, maybe ask him to switch it to something quieter, like a story time with a definite start/finish? it might be the arbitrary end of the playtime that's setting her off so badly.

for our family, 3 was a pretty physically demanding year, but it did pass. we have other crazy & dramatic stuff now, but i do feel better equipped to deal with it since i'm not quite so bone tired! best of luck!

ITA! Believe it or not, there is going to be a time that will happen all to soon where you'll miss all the 3-year-old adorableness and play time together

That said, 3 years is an exhausting age! (For us parents :D). And I'm not a fan of spending a lot of time playing if it's not some kind of play I really like When my kids were little I dealt with situations like this by changing out everything - by distracting them completely enough they'd forget about what they wanted me to do that I didn't want to - does that make sense?

Soooo... my suggestion for the morning, after dad leaves for work, is to make that the time you and your dd get up and get out and go somewhere - it could be grocery shopping, to a park, whatever *you* feel like doing then. Entertain her, but on your terms And even better if you can fit in a chore

Other tips in general at that age - she's almost old enough that playdates are going to help a little bit. There's still a lot of parental oversight needed at 3, but having a friend over will take a little bit of the "play with me mom" demand away. For at least a little while Plus if you can find one friend that you can swap playdates with, that will give you some free time too when she's playdating at the other mom's house.

If you need to be at home, can't leave, can't find a buddy to play with, then have her help you do chores. My kids were oh so happy to "help" with laundry, sweep the floor, etc at 3.

Best wishes,

polarbear

I can only dream. But we ran into a similar phase where it was all maintenance and setup. So for DS7, starting around 3yrs I guarantee him 30 minutes of real play time together. For the first couple of years it was mostly me being a toy, now it is more balanced.

And to really understand a kid's value system, those minutes are more golden than anything else to encourage good behavior. They also make for a natural consequence... well you used up a lot of my time by doing XXX that I had to cleanup; so, I'm going to charge 5 minutes from your playtime.

On the one hand, this is true, but on the other hand, it is so, so unhelpful to those in the middle of it. I remember how it used to make me crazy when people would say things like this to me. I don't regret not spending more time with my kids when they were 3, for what it's worth. In fact, I sort of wish I'd left them to their own devices a little more - they might be more independent now.

I stay at home and my son is almost 3. Honestly, I spend a lot of time playing with him or reading to him. Hours. He is an only child. The more time I spend actively playing with him, the more I find that he is comfortable and happy to have other times on his own. Kind of like filling his attention cup. On days it is full early, I have a bit more flexibility to multitask. Days I can't really fill it early, I have trouble getting anything done. Some days the cup seems infinitely large. Other days pretty small. When he finds a compatible playmate on the playground, he has no interest in me whatsoever.

Just thirding the "full cup of attention" thing. Another thing I've noticed about the cup is that it seems to vary by child and age in terms of what fills each child's cup. Also, what fills a child's need for stimulation and novelty might not fill the child's need for attention. An all day trip to the zoo might not fill the attention cup as much as 30 minutes of Candyland and I think if you are finding that your child just wants more, more, more maybe you just have to experiment to figure out what fills his or her cup more efficiently. For my child, she needs daily outings for stimulation and I get on the floor and play pretend with her for attention and stimulation, but what fills her need for attention up the most quickly and keeps her happiest the longest seems to be physical play like pillow fights. I think it's just trial and error to find out what works best.

I'm not a huge fan of pretend play compared to other activities I could be doing with DD but I still do it because I think it's good for her and usually I end up learning something about her and what she's thinking about while we are playing. During pretend play I try to show DD how to incorporate toys in new ways so that I can feel like I'm teaching her something. My daughter likes to play pretend with dollhouse toys each day so this week we did things like built little castles out of Magna-Tiles for her dolls, made her dolls a swimming pool with construction paper and wooden blocks for the stairs and slide, drew train tracks and other parts of a town on a large piece of newsprint. The dolls took a train to the zoo (a poster of animals in her room) and I was able to do a little teaching "at the zoo" too. Maybe it sounds dumb and still very boring but if I'm finding new ways of showing her something new I'm not as bored and just trying to come up with ways to weave in something new gives me some small goal to focus on.