Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School I'm Emotionally Exhausted! Tips, please

Sounds just like me/us! My preferred "activity" is reading aloud with him, probably only DS's top 10 interactive thing for us to do. Legos ends up being a default for us. I just got SNAP Jr. and he likes that, but it's hard to meaningfully interact with younger DD2 around.

I truly think that a lot of his talking has been my encouragement over the years. I actually always have listened and responded to all his talk to the best I could. I didn't want him to feel stifled. So now we need to reign it in a bit or modify it.

I looked into the local YMCA with daycare today... might be a great option!

Playgrounds are great, but only useful if both children go together to "play" together, or if there are other children around. I do get on the playground with DD2 since she's so young, but I'm not really playing with DS anymore as I feel he's old enough to be safe-ish on a typical playground. This has occurred only recently, within the last 6 months. Before then I was playing on the playground as well and strictly supervising. His awareness of danger is pretty immature still. We do better with indoor playgrounds.

There's the key. It's the kids who are bored and miserable that get noticed (or the ones who are hurt, scared, or behaving anti-socially), and the first thought is, "Where are your parents?" Oh, they're on the phone/chatting with other adults/otherwise being completely oblivious. But who am I to judge?

The parents of the children who are playing vigorously never draw this kind of attention. Their kids' needs are being met, so they're free to use that time however they like.

I imagine the kids who are having a terrible time make their parents pay for it later.

My best strategy is to plan possible activity options ahead of time when my child doesn't otherwise want my attention. When DS goes down for a nap, I enjoy spending 10 minutes or so imagining up some fun ideas for the next day. That way, we can both get behind a plan enthusiastically because it reflects our mutual interests.

I think the reason a lot of parents give up on interacting is that they get stuck in a rut of perceiving an unduly limited set of options. Take the parents at our local park as an example. They see these options:

- Sit on edge of sandbox and fill bucket ad nauseum
- Push child on swing as nauseum
- Stand next to play structure and stare at DC

Why not get involved creatively and do something *you* like! For example, we jazzed up the sandbox by building competing cities of sandcastles and playing bombardment with a rubber ball yesterday. It teaches the child so many strategic and engineering skills: how to optimize castle placement and city configuration, how to throw accurately, how to plan the order of your attack, etc. We played for a good hour, and I can honestly say it was a TON of fun.

For an older child, you can play lava tag, where you are immune if you've climbed on top of the play structure's roof/into a free, etc.

Make games up! Write a hopscotch board with letters and race to see how many words you can hop to in a minute! Draw a number line and race to solve equations using different movements (jumping, skipping, running, crab walking, etc).

Other fun ideas:

- Sports! Kids are never too young to learn them, and they promote the kind of vigorous exercise that children (and their parents!) need. As a rule, I keep a general purpose rubber ball, a practice rubber softball, and a bat in the stroller for impromptu park trips. It doesn't matter if they have no ability or are athletic prodigies. Fun is the name of the game. For older children, a few skipping roles of different lengths are, IMO, essential. Compete on broad jumps, pull ups, high jumps, somersaults and kartwheels, etc.

- Nature exploration: IDing trees, tracking animals, analyzing different parts of plants or insects, building sculptures out of natural materials, IDing cloud/weather formations, doing light experiments with prisms on sunny days, collecting interesting "specimens", stargazing, etc. Go for a hike with a camera, snap pictures of interesting things, and have your child note observations and practice scientific drawings in a log book.

I hope these ideas get you excited to hit the park! Children grow up so quickly-- take advantage of your children actually wanting to be around you while it lasts, because you'll soon be complaining of neglect when they're teenagers.

... I don't know about that last bit, aquinas. DD is one of these kids, and honestly, she still talks to me PLENTY, even at nearly 15yo. Her dad, now-- she shuts him out somewhat, but not completely. She still loves to chatter-chatter-chatter at BOTH of us, and to poke at us verbally until we respond. I still have to ask her to (politely) be quiet so that I can hear myself think. She generally is better at picking up those signals from me now, so I have to say it less-- she can SEE when I'm writing an e-mail or picking up voicemail, driving in traffic, or need my full attention on things.

She's constantly posing me hypothetical/metaphysical/ethical questions, and probing me/using me as a sounding board for a Socratic exploration. The debate world lost a major star as a result of her not going to a high school with a debate team, I'll tell ya what.

Even TRYING to pre-plan was a disaster when she was little. She would do my (open-ended, appropriate, and completely engaging) activity for about... ten nanoseconds... and then be right back to wanting my FULL attention in ways that weren't sustainable for me. To be perfectly frank, anything that was MY idea was automatically only "humoring Mom" and was given lip service at best. That might be unique as a facet of her oppositional tendencies, I don't know.

But it meant that enforcing boundaries on the behavioral impulses was essential to my sanity as an introvert.

My kids do play well together and we do play together - the last 4 days I have hung around the skateboard park 1.5 to 2 hours each morning and actively taken part in 2 on 1 soccer games each afternoon (it is school holidays and I have had a few days off). I also take them outside and play playground games (Mr. Wolf, creep up Jack etc). I enjoy playing with them but sometimes I just need mummy time to check the forums or read on my kindle.

I don't usually feel judged at tge park because I am usually the only adult there. There are occasionally unsupervised unaccompanied kids there but mostly just us.

Thanks for some great ideas. I will start bringing more sports equipment when we go to the playground/parks. Nature exploration works only sporadically with DS5, though DD2 could stare at the forest for an hour I think! It is so important to be creative with interactions. Though I agree with another poster that sometimes anything planned (or unplanned), has a low success rate of lasting more than a few minutes.