That's tough. Does she have lots of toys within reach to play with during the day? She can probably occupy herself for quite some time every day usefully (and develop her thinking ability) by playing with building toys like blocks, Magneatos, Duplos / Quattros, wooden trains, etc. as well as puzzles (we have tons), and a bit later on stimulating toys like Capsela, marble runs, Legos, etc. Both of my kids have also loved plastic dinosaurs, Little People and other sorts of early role-playing imaginational toys. I'd make sure that her play area has plenty of toys of different types available for her to get out and play with on her own. An easel with dry-erase markers, paper with colored pencils, etc. is another idea of something she could use mostly on her own. Then if when you get home there's a mess, you can nag hubby to clean it up. laugh

I personally don't think that the main problem here is lack of time with dad, if he's willing to read with her when she brings him a book, especially as a lot of free-play activities can be done alone. She probably gets a lot just from his presence and occasional emotional reinforcement as she goes about her day.

Still, and this is tough to recommend, I would demand that your husband keep the Xbox and TV shows off-- being a parent involves sacrifices, and those are pretty petty on the grand scheme of things. Maybe you could hunt up some news articles on the negative impacts of too much screen time.


Striving to increase my rate of flow, and fight forum gloopiness. sick