The Playful Parent: 7 ways to happier, calmer, more creative days with your under-fives. Julia Deering

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СКАЧАТЬ think you’ll need. Label them if they’re not transparent – you will want to be able to access their contents quickly and easily. Display those that you do want left out on low shelves and in lots of small baskets and tubs.

      

Make some, carefully considered, toys and playthings accessible in small storage stations all over your home – the bathroom, the hall, the master bedroom, the kitchen and garden – as well as in the living room and your child’s bedroom.

      

Find a space for construction play.

      

Find a space for physical play, like target practice, inside.

      

Look out for spaces for temporary dens and book-nooks.

      

Have small baskets or boxes of picture books all over your home – don’t just store them on one bookshelf.

      

Create a dress-up area with a mirror.

      

Make a creative/making station.

      

Find a space for a listening station – with an easy to use CD player, cushions and a few audio books.

      

Provide at least one designated doodle area.

      

Make any outside space as safe and as interesting a place to play as inside – think accessible storage stations with kid-friendly tools and toys, a low work-bench, places for temporary dens – not just as a place for running around and other physical activity.

      

Find space outside for those messy or wet-play activities – and, if possible, somewhere for digging.

      You can prepare for play when you’re out and about too. This doesn’t mean you need to take a suitcase full of toys with you wherever you go, rather, it’s about taking along a basic kit to encourage play. What you pack will depend on your outing, of course, but whether it’s a small toy or two, a roll of Sellotape, some paper and crayons, a torch, a take-a-look book, or a little bucket for collecting things, you can initiate some wonderful play by handing over something other than your smartphone when you’re out and about to get your child thinking, learning and playing in the real world and engaging appropriately with their environment.

      So, now we’re ready, we’re set. Let’s play!

       Chores: not Bores

      Chore noun. A small piece of domestic work (freq. in pl.); an odd job; a recurrent, routine or tedious task.

      Whether we love or loathe chores, it’s impossible to deny the fact that they are an ever-present aspect of domestic life. Anywhere along the sliding scale between house-proud neat freak and firmly in the chores-are-for-bores camp, our own relationship with, and attitude towards, chores becomes crystallised some time between the age of three and thirty-three. Once established, it’s pretty hard to alter, until, that is, we have children. Most parents would agree that as soon as a baby arrives on the scene, chores not only multiply but they also swell and mutate, unearthing a brand-new set of domestic tasks just when our time to carry out such jobs has been totally eradicated by the newly arrived bundle of joy.

      ‘Suddenly you have to do the washing up or the laundry, or whatever, as soon as you get a spare minute. There’s no choice. There’s no “I can’t be bothered”. There’s no later. And if you don’t do the basics when you can it can all quickly unravel – from a stinky, overflowing nappy bin and no clean bottles, to no clean mugs for that much-needed tea. It was a learning curve and a half.’

      Dad of two, remembering the early days

      During the baby years we, as loving, responsible parents, accept and maybe even relish the realisation that we must carry out chores for, and because of, our children; there is usually a tacit acceptance of our fate. But at some point, perhaps as our children turn from tots to preschoolers, or from preschoolers to school-age children, or even from school-age children to teenagers (it hits every parent at a different time), there comes a day, or a moment in a day, when we suddenly feel like the maid. This is neither a positive nor pleasant feeling to experience and it can soon lead to feelings of resentment towards those chores caused directly by children, which, let’s face it, feels like all of them, doesn’t it?

      However, it seems that in the UK and the US, parents are more reluctant than their predecessors to ask children to carry out household tasks. Recent studies have shown that children are increasingly not expected to contribute in any real way to the domestic chores of everyday family life, and older children often receive bribes or payment for completing their chores. At what age and exactly how children might become involved in domestic chores is, of course, a parental prerogative, but according to this poll many parents believe that they should involve their children in chores, even if they don’t.

      Apart from avoiding that feeling-like-the-maid moment, there are many other good reasons for introducing age-appropriate chores to children at some point in their childhood. For example, by carrying out chores children can:

      

learn to be confident and responsible

      

feel an important part of the family

      

learn to care for themselves

      

learn to care for others

      

increase their self-esteem (for a job well done)

      

develop specific skills like hand–eye coordination and problem-solving

      It seems children are perhaps even predisposed to wanting to help with chores; they certainly develop a natural inclination to be kind, even selfless, at a younger age than we might suppose. German psychology researcher Felix Warneken, PhD, showed that at 18 months old toddlers are capable of exhibiting altruistic behaviour. In one experiment, Dr Warneken had an adult, laden with books to put away, pretend to be unable to open the doors to a cupboard. More often than not – without being asked or offered a reward – the toddlers helped.

      But here’s the rub: how do you get children to continue to develop those altruistic flashes of behaviour and carry СКАЧАТЬ