I really struggle with many aspects of playing with my daughter. Its great when we are out, adventure type stuff. Hide and seek, on the beach at the park etc all is great. I really struggle to engage with her indoors though, playing things like jigsaws, playmobile etc. I’ve never been one to sit around and if i do its normally on the internet researching something to death.

I find imaginative play quite boring and dull even as a kid and I find myself just ignoring her. She is 2, my wife will occasionally say can you sit and play with her while i have an hour doing this or that… It normally ends up with daughter running to her mother crying as i sit there bored stiff. If im left in charge i normally take her swimming or something which seems to rectify the problem.

Does anyone else find it difficult just generally playing with their kids? It gets to the point when i just dont enjoy doing it. I sometimes sit and reflect on this and it gets me a bit down. I dont want her to grow up thinking im grumpy, I dont think she will as we have fun out and about at parks etc.

its normal ! wait till she starts talking and asking lots of beautiful questions about life !

hang on in there

Totally normal, IME. Or at least, one version of normal.

Does anyone else find it difficult just generally playing with their kids?

Yeap just the same. My little one is 4 and is incapable of playing by herself, there is only so many times I can play nurseries with her. Fortunately she has moved onto doctors now which is more interesting.

I’d much rather be out and about at the park, on the bike, swimming etc.

normal +1. Even with boys. I get bored playing with trains and frustrated with my 4 year olds RC Heli which he no longer thinks he needs “help” with.

Don’t beat yourself up about it. Their attention spans are quite short whilst they’re young and they also eventually reach a point where you can set them off playing and leave them to it.

Time invested is always worth it though…stick with it!

You could always go to a makeup class browse charity shops for feather bowers, hats and such like so you can play dressing up games and applying makeup to one another. If you also go down to your local arts and crafts shop and buy some nice coloured paper and sparkly sprinkle stuff so you can apply the copydex glue and your daughter will be delighted with the creations.

Your wife will find it so adoring if you paint each others nails with her nail varnish and just think of the joy it will bring to your daughter. I am sure this will help cement the bond between yourself and daughter so she will be so excited ehen it comes to playtime with daddy.

Yup. I can build towers that he knocks down but that only lasts 5mins or so. Out od the house is no problem though? I guess I’m just not an indoors person, and as you say, if I’m inside I’m on the net or reading something. I do feel guilty that I’m not engaging with my son, but I just keep trying to find fun things for us to do that keep me interested too!

Normal. I make the effort, but I’m really not very good at the make believe stuff, at least not at 3yo level. My wife instinctively understands her needs when it comes to the little house and person games, cos that’s where she gets it from of course. She’s also much better at building duplo houses.

On the other hand I do all the rough and tumble stuff. It’s always me playing horsey, wrestling, holding her upside down and all that stuff. Play to your strengths 🙂

Totally normal and (as said above) don’t beat yourself up about it. Your strengths are in the adventure stuff (swimming, hide and seek etc) so its not like you are saying you don’t enjoy ANY activity with your daughter. Maybe look at playgroups nearby.. I have taken my two year old daughter to a “little fishes” group that has loads of props (kitchens, pushchairs, hats), the kids can either amuse themselves or you can join in. I found the interaction awkward at first but then got into it. Maybe get some puppets and act out some STW arguments!(“Lance is guilty”, “oh no he isn’t!” should take up a few hours 😆 ) kids don’t seem to mind what you are saying so long as it is with a funny voice.

Well i feel loads better now. I do all the rough stuff thats fine. Its just playing bloody zoo’s that does my head in.

Depends whether you are happy with this being ‘normal’. I love firing Ms TT’s imagination and doing stuff with her. It is hard work, but seeing th learning happening is so rewarding. We make castles, she dresses up, read books, do art or stickers. It is more two way as they get older than 2 (mine is nearly 3), but try and develop the indoor stuff as well as the outdoor stuff.

I don’t do role playing play so well, but I do do lots of other interesting and fascinating things. That’s where I get my rewards. I explain things to her, she understands – this is fab.

Like for instance, I explained to her what zombies are. Few weeks later, we are talking about someone’s cat that had died. “Maybe it became a zombie” she said. She talks about zombies a lot, especially to other adults.

^ see i cant do that – i think you either have imagination or not my brother is brilliant with his 2 yr old and my daughter i sit wondering where he gets the ideas from.

Sounds normal to me, it’s a stage you will both move through – play to your strengths, I’m better at certain activities with the kids than my wife and vice versa, it gets easier as they grow older, or at least, the difficult stuff changes to other difficult stuff.

Normal, but as you get older and they disappear into bedrooms and Call of duty, you sometimes wish you could have that time back.

I have a 2yr old little girl, I love playing on our bed with her. Lie on your back, hold her to your chest and go 1 2 3 and rock her to the other side, get her to stand on your chest & hold her hands and go ‘wooo watch out’ and make her rock side to side and then gently sorta slam her down to the bed while making lots of noises with the impact. Hold her by the waist in the air and make her spin bringing her head down & give her a big kiss. Any combination of the above has my daughter in fits of laughter & I can give her lots of cuddles n kisses.

Thanks snakebite thats the foot up the preverbal i needed. A dose of reality right there. I want to go and wake her up now and play zoo keepers.

Phew I too thought it was just me. There’s only so many times Mater can “rescue” Lighting McQueen after he’s crashed.

My 4yo loves bikes and tools though, so I can teach/watch him pump up an inner tube with a track pump or use my Allen keys in a pretend way on his balance bike for ages. I did have to move him along when I found him wandering near my (carbon) road bike holding one of my hammers once.

Normal. Have you tried reading books together? Definitely play to your strengths.

kids can be frustrating

if i have to read the gruffalo one more time………………

Its not all bad she knows quite a bit about 50mm carbon clinchers

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Untitled by H2O Foto, on Flickr[/img]

if i have to read the gruffalo one more time………………

We’ve struck a deal where I choose the bedtime book every other day. In return he can choose whether on his day he reads or uses the time to Play. Bedtime is strictly observed no matter what his choice – he mostly chooses to read.

My 4yo loves bikes and tools though, so I can teach/watch him pump up an inner tube with a track pump or use my Allen keys in a pretend way on his balance bike for ages. I did have to move him along when I found him wandering near my (carbon) road bike holding one of my hammers once.

I was more encouraging with my daughters interest in tools and pretending to fix her bike/scooter/etc before the incident where she tried to ‘fix’ both our cars and the camper van with a spanner. Most t-cut out 😕

For indoors stuff I find Lego or jigsaws a good way to engage, more so than playing tea parties, dolls houses, etc.

Carbon, this is totally normal in my world. I often wondered the same as you as my mates didn’t seam to have the same feelings. They all have boys, I have a girl. She’s 5 now and totally amazing so it gets better/easier I can assure you.

For indoors stuff I find Lego or jigsaws a good way to engage, more so than playing tea parties, dolls houses, etc.

This s a good point – above I said he can choose to play before bed time. That play consists of choosing a jigsaw, playing Tummy Ache ( food edu card game) or Snap with numbers or recently introduced Sums (adding and taking away)

My 3 month yo dribbled in my mouth today while she was “flying” above my face whilst I was lying on the sofa.

Just saying….

Is that normal? Really? Not sure myself.

Monkey Jnr is 2.5yrs and I love playing with him indoors and out. He’s always been full of energy, chat, ideas, exploration, creativity and general zest for fun, so maybe that makes “it” easier? I dunno. We don’t spoil him with loads of toys/games/books but he certainly has more than enough, so there’s usually some way to create variety – although we dads knows that’s not always possible!

Sure, there are times when I need a break. Thankfully he’s at an age where I can sometimes do my own thing for a few mins, e.g. laptop, bit of work, tidying up, etc, without being “hassled” too much (or at all).

I suppose I just like to play … make stuff up … tell stories … go off on a tangent … try something out … and generally muck in.

Wait til you have to do their bloody homework with them. Now that can be sooooo boring!

getting littlies to read a different book is hard sometime – if it’s a new one and smallperson says she doesn’t want to read it, I do a preview and tell her the ending, this seems to work

hang on in there, it happens to us all, especially cos the weather is crap and we can’t do outdoorsy stuff

Have you tried colouring? I loved colouring. Really therapeutic… For me.

I love playing – I guess my job as a researcher is in part imaginative play dressed up in a more structured environment. But everyone can get bored with kids play at times, it is often hard to understand why they want to do particular things or why they do things a million times. I think when you step back from things slightly, kids are intellectually fascinating – if you’re at all interested in science or psychology or anything, there is so much going on.

If you are a facty researching things type, I read this book when Rose was little, and it is a fascinating insight into why babies and toddlers do what they do. Really made me think a lot about what is going on in her mind and how she learns stuff.

Anyway, once you’ve read that, you can at least in part see her playing as an interesting intellectual adventure for you – rather than thinking that things are a stupid and childish game, you can think of imaginative games at least in part as a way of rationalising and making sense of and organising things that they’ve encountered or that have happened to them, or of experimenting with things she is thinking about in a safe environment. For example we often catch Rose telling her toys off for doing things that are surprisingly like things we’ve told her not to do – “no Mr Mole, you not jump off there. Too high.”

Also, if she likes particular things, and you are good with facts or projects, then you can combine the two – Rose likes jumping in rivers and walking on the muddy path by the river. We spent some time sitting on a high bank chucking things in and watching them go round, and she now knows about eddies, currents and things, because I’m quite into the dynamics of the river and I think it’s a really interesting thing. She also has her own synthesizer, which I built over a few evenings, bit of a project for me, and a fun toy for her.

If she is zoo keepers mad, learn some facts about animals*, or find some new and exciting animals to look after. Or just subvert her games and make the animals be naughty and try to escape. Subverting games is often more fun than playing them nicely, and kids seem to like it; things like when she’s putting her animals to bed in their little beds, it turns out the animals are a pain at bedtime, and don’t want to put on their night time nappies or whatever, and just want to play, I see that particular game as revenge for her evening antics, but she seems to like it.

Joe

* might not work at 2, but a good (and true!) animal fact for older kids is that you can tell giraffe poos from other animal poos really easily – the giraffe poo will be all splatted out because it fell from a great height!

getting littlies to read a different book is hard sometime – if it’s a new one and smallperson says she doesn’t want to read it, I do a preview and tell her the ending, this seems to work

I find looking through the book with a few oh’s and ah’s without letting them see it raises their interest.

+1 drawing and colouring. We’ve been using a modern take on the EtchaSketch thingy to draw everything you can think of. Tis a great way to engage and “educate”, i.e. draw something and ask what it is etc, e.g. animals, dinosaurs, furniture, trees, numbers, letters, toys … It helps if you can at least draw a bit. And is very therapeutic in IMO.

You’re a terrible man, beat yourself with a fresh mullet

This is not a Dad only thing, trust me! I’m great at the out and about with Small Kip(similar age to OP’s daughter) but sometimes really struggle with the other indoor stuff. Small really likes my attention, maybe because I’m mum and spend more time with her, but I always used to wonder how Mr Kip managed to keep her amused and do his own stuff.

The answer is to include her in what you’re doing. Small loves to go to the shed and sort stuff. She loves to help fix the bikes. She loves to move sand from her sandpit to anywhere else. She loves to do stuff and hear you say “well done.” Cooking is a winner too. Jumping on the bed…winner! Water play…winner!

Don’t stress too much, you’re daughter loves you for who you are…Daddy, and to be honest that’s why men and women are different, so their kids get different experiences.

Mrs TT’s view of this was a little more blunt than you might wish to hear, but sod it – she usually has a very good point:

“So he is happy with ‘fun play time’ but leaves the real parenting to his wife.”

You can’t always take them to the fun things where something else holds their interest, so be a more rounded dad and better at the other stuff.

We used to go and fetch cardboard boxes from the supermarket and build things that my 2 could sit in and then play – made planes, boats, kayaks, helicopters – they got to draw and colour on them with marker pens, help design it – we played for whole days with them when Mrs Cat was working. Give it a try, you could steer it away from pink and fluffy.

There’s lots of other stuff you can do that’s practical, you just have to make it fun. Paper mache over balloons was also a good one.

I get the offspring involved in doing stuff I’m already doing – filling the dishwasher, making bread, going to B&Q to find light bulbs, whatever. That’s always a good way to keep her occupied. Playing, well we really got her toys we like playing with – Brio trains, marble runs, that kind of thing, so it’s not really a chore. We have a game with dominoes, I build a tower, she waits patiently then knocks it over. Fun for me as I can experiment with different tower designs to get it as high as possible.

Ask her what kind of animal / vehicle she is – guess silly ones. “Are you an aardvark?” “Are you a combine harvester?” When she picks up a building block, ask her what colour it is (again, silly guesses for amusement value), get her to count the sides. Explain stuff – even if she doesn’t understand it. Mine mentioned the blue sky today so told her about Rayleigh scattering. It’s amazing how much little brains soak up, and they enjoy just knowing stuff, doesn’t matter what it is.

I found it helps a lot of get into the right state of mind – don’t think about what else you could be doing with your time, think about how this time will pass so you need to enjoy it while you can.

Trying to involve her in things you’re doing is a good idea. My daughter loves to help me cook or tidy up the garage etc. Just be prepared for things to take (a lot) longer.

Granted I’m not a parent but when I confessed to feeling the same way about playing with one of mates kids and generally feeling a bit awkward and rubbish around kids she told me not to be so daft and that she felt the same most of the time. I thought I was a bit rubbish with kids, she thinks I’m great with them. It sounds normal to me and I suspect that it just takes a bit more effort.

Not sure about rough and tumble not being “real parenting” though.