I had a mom ask me the other day how long their one year old should be playing independently with their toys. It feels like this can be a tricky question depending on age, stage, and even personality type. In this blog post I wanted to outline the different ways that we can think about independent play, the role that it serves, and how to encourage our kids to build longer independent play skills while still balancing their cooperative play skills.
One of the hardest things in life for me personally, professionally, and in general… is BALANCE. This is really what this question comes down to. We want to see our kiddos balancing independent play with cooperative play as they begin to mature and develop. Let’s back up a second and define cooperative play compared to independent play. Independent play is where your child is able to take toys or items by themselves and engage purposefully with these materials. This could be stacking the toys, lining them up, creating a short story with them, using them together in an appropriate way such as using the spoon to feed the baby, or using cause and effect toys like taking shapes in and out of a sorter or completing a puzzle. Cooperative play on the other hand, and by contrast, is when a child is able to play with toys or other people in tandem or interactively as a group. This could mean that your child is able to take turns stacking the blocks, putting in the pieces, dialoguing back and forth about what’s happening, and engaging in some way with people around them. Both of these are extremely important as your child begins to develop and learn how to play, and we need both of them. We need our children to be able to play alone and figure out how to use toys and items purposefully. We also need them to be able to play interactively with others. It’s hard to find a balance.
We weren’t given rulebooks, manuals, or a step by step guides on how to raise a child and playing is no different. No child is exactly the same and no guidelines or milestones, no matter how researched based they are, will fit every single child. What we want to see is that as your child grows from 12 months, to 20 months, to 36 months and beyond, that they are expanding the length of time that they are playing independently and cooperatively. You will notice your child is willing to play with you for longer, as well as play by themselves for longer periods of time.
My tip to this mama was to encourage independent play for her 12 month old whenever possible, and ALSO to sit down and play cooperatively with him whenever possible. We know that this is life and it changes constantly. Some days you may have time to play cooperatively and other days you may need a large amount of independent play from your child. Give yourself grace, be flexible, and try to have a balance! Have fun playing!
-Kasey