My daughter is 20 months old, and as it is she spends 1/2-2/3 of her day playing independently. Don't get me wrong, she is perfectly content playing alone with me just keeping an eye on her, either in the same room or over the monitor, if she gets hurt or wants me I make sure to respond as soon as possible, and she's far from behind on talking (she can recite numbers 1-10, around 50 words, and a few short 3-4 word sentences) but I worry that I'm not spending enough time on interactive play with her? I also try to involve her in making her food but most of the time she just tries to eat it before it's ready and then wants to run off and play when I won't let her. Is this amount of independent play okay? Or should I be spending more time interacting with her?
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Controversial but I don’t play with my son. He independently plays perfectly and I interact with him and include him in daily life - he LOVES helping with laundry, cooking, and putting stuff up. As long as they’re content I don’t see an issue with it 🤷♀️
Edit: His dad is the main one who really plays with him. I believe moms are better at teaching and nurturing and dads are better at playing and being the ‘fun’ parent. Ofc if we’re at the park I’ll gladly play with him and push him on the swings or whatever. Or if he comes up to me with his toys then I’ll play with him!

Same as my LG she's 22months and if they are content and happy it's generally a good thing they play independently, we all have mum guilt for all kinds of reasons and tbh I feel the same as you that I should do more with her. But if they enjoy playing independently it will just create a losing battle 😂 we should be enjoying the independence but I know it's hard, I want my baby back sometimes. & same she can count to ten and sometimes even does a 6words sentence, knows her shapes, colours and all animals and baby animals it astounds me everyday

Independent play is great, my daughter was the opposite and would only play with me. But this actually led to issues in nursery and school as she was only used to playing with an adult and obviously she would go first, use things when she wanted ect because I didnt think anything of it. Then she couldnt play alone at all either so its been very difficult. Shes 8 now and still struggles. Obviously I dont know if that was the main cause but she also has ADHD.
My son is 19 months old and loves playing independently but ive tried to keep a balance. He still struggled to play with someone though but they do at this age. We've started trying to teach him to wait before knocking down a tower that myself or his big sis is making , weve tried encouraging him to pass us pieces to help build the tower and then we started encouraging him to physically help. Its been a slow and difficult process but hes making some small progress.
That might be a good way to start as you want to tru and avoid issues with sharing

Also what you said with getting her to help make food, maybe start with something like fruit salad and putting into a bowl, help washing the fruit, peeling it ext. Get some kid safe knives. I used these with my daughter and she did amazing. Just something very simple, thats safe to eat at anytime. She will eventually learn to listen 😊

I don’t think I put my daughter down until she was 2 years old tbh. I would have loved to have a child that played independently lol