Does your child struggle to entertain themselves? Do you find your child following you around the house like your shadow? Do they constantly complain about how bored they are? Or do they not want to leave their room? Are video games an issue? Are you working from home and can’t have too many distractions? Boredom can present in all sorts of ways and this can affect the whole family!
Here are some ideas to help you make it through the summer months!
Video games can be very addictive. There are several benefits such as fine motor development, problem solving, imaginative play, and communicating with others. It can help increase social skills, math and literacy skills. But it can become very problematic when our kids don’t want to do anything else.
There are ways to limit the access to wifi and gaming which can help with making sure responsibilities and healthy habits are accomplished. Using the games as rewards can be a wonderful incentive to completing other less enjoyable tasks as well, as long as it is not such an obsessive choice that you cannot redirect them to something else when the time is up.
If you are a Rogers customer, you can use their app to turn the wifi on and off, for any device in your home. Or take a look at the Qustodio app for online safety and usage. I’m sure other companies would have something similar.
Here is a little book I created to share with you. It is designed to help you teach your child to be more independent with their play especially if they have a hard time leaving your side.
The instructions are posted in the book and the supplies you will need can be purchased at any dollar store. The supplies needed are: velcro strips or dots and a timer.
Reward systems/token systems can be a topic to discuss further. Many professionals and some families believe they are helpful in teaching new skills. And some don’t like the idea of using tokens or rewards. But since this is a blog post where we share what has worked for us, I will leave the data for another discussion at a later time.
Reward systems for Gracie were fantastic for motivating her to learn. But it did cause its own issues where eventually she wouldn’t do a single thing without expecting a reward. But this too passed and without the rewards in the first place, I don’t think she’d come as far as she had. So the book above does include rewards but I also included pictures of a hug and high five with the reward pictures, just in case 🙂
