Let me entertain you
NS December 5th, 2008
I’m sorry that I quoted a Robbie Williams song but I need your help so please don’t hold it against me.
I need ideas for relatively easy, cheap activities to do, mainly indoors, with a 2-3 year old. I’m trying to come up with a list of 100 or more so that I have at least one activity per day for the rest of winter. You see, I’ve gotten stuck into a rut with The Noble Child and need some fresh creativity. I’m afraid that the tv-watching I allowed her to do a lot of when I was heavily pregnant and when The Noble Baby was first born and needed constant feeding has turned her into a bit of a telly addict. There are times that she refuses to play or draw or do anything other than sulk about not getting to watch CBeebies or a favourite dvd. I know it’s my own fault for letting it get to this stage but I’m determined to turn it around.
When I was in my last trimester and pretty uncomfortable, I began allowing her to eat her breakfast at her little table in the living room instead of the dining room, watching cartoons as she ate her cereal. Not only has this wrecked the carpet but it has allowed me to become a lazy parent in the morning, letting tv babysit her while I wake up, make coffee, get dressed, eat breakfast, check email and surf the web. Then I started letting her watch a dvd every afternoon before Daddy gets home because I had either run out of steam or ideas. Then when TNB came along and I was stuck on the sofa breastfeeding for long stretches of time, I stopped fighting her requests to watch tv and just let her have at it. To be brutally honest, some days she was watching upwards of four hours of tv a day. Ouch. That is something I never thought I’d hear myself say as a parent.
Lately I’ve been getting sucked into the computer for longer and longer periods of time and not paying enough attention to my daughter, who in turn gets sucked into the tv. It’s a cycle that started with me and it will be a hard habit to break but I need to do it for both our sakes. I don’t want to be a zombie parent who ignores her while I attend to own selfish desires first and I certainly don’t want her to think that computers and tv are all that can entertain us. So I must start setting a good example and get my booty off the computer when she is awake. We need to start playing together again, connecting again.
This is where you come in. If you have any ideas for things we can do around the house (keeping in mind that our house is pretty small, we have only minimal disposable income and we’ll have a baby in tow all day as well) please leave them in comments. I’m also asking around my family and friends and when it’s all said and done I will produce the finished list here to give other parents of toddlers some inspiration if they’re looking for it.
Can’t wait to see what you come up with!
