The BEST Parenting Tip to Keep Moms Sane and Give You Some Time to Yourself

Hi friends, welcome to Intentional Motherhood. I wanted to take a minute here and share some exciting news with you. Did you catch it? You may have noticed that the podcast has a new name. What started as motherhood, the best job in the world, has now become Intentional Motherhood.

So why the change? Well, as this community has grown, so has the heart and vision behind what I am sharing. I wanted the title to really reflect what I'm doing here, which is helping moms just like you build intentional homes, be proactively thinking about the family culture they're creating, nurturing kids' emotional and spiritual development, and create beautiful family cultures rooted in presence, purpose, joy, adventure. And full disclosure, I just wanted a name of a podcast that would allow more moms to find it. My goal here is all about helping moms who are searching for this kind of support to have what they need.

And I'm hoping that this new title makes it a little bit easier for the right moms to discover these conversations and join our community. So thank you so much for being here, whether you've been here from the very beginning of motherhood, the best job in the world, or if you just found the show, I'm so grateful to be walking this journey with you. Let's get started.

So today we're talking about something that is honestly one of my favorite parenting tricks. It is probably the most powerful tool for our children's social and emotional development, as well as a huge gift to ourselves as the mothers. Giving us time and space to breathe, to reset, and to parent from a place of peace and presence.

So what is this number one most important parenting tip and trick I'm going to share with you? This is the skill of independent play. So let's talk about what independent play actually does for our kids and why it's a skill that needs to be taught and nurtured and not just something we can expect them to do. of all, independent play allows children to experiment with and learn emotional regulation skills.

When kids are playing independently, whether that's by themselves or actually with siblings, they are in a imaginary space to process, feel, and manage their emotions on their own terms. You might notice that you have kids who whisper talking out little stories with their toys or in their imagination. They're processing something that may have happened that day or earlier, or they're just exploring feelings through creative play. This is emotional self regulation in action. The next skill that kids practice while they play independently is problem solving and creativity.

They're going to have to figure out how do I build this tower? How do I make this puzzle work? What do I do when I'm missing a piece or missing a toy? How am I going to make this work? Without someone jumping in to fix it, they practice persistence and problem solving.

Those moments grow resiliency eventually in kids. And you might be wondering, how does this work when we introduce siblings, right? This is actually a really important social development skill that kids have to experience. This is where kids on their own terms start to understand leadership and following directions, how to manage disagreements. They pick up social cues from other kids when they don't have to have an adult come and tell them what to do.

Because guess what? When you keep knocking over your sister's tower and now your sister doesn't wanna play with you anymore, You have just learned a lesson from a kid instead of being told by a parent, Hey, don't knock over the toys. Hey, make sure you play nice. Sometimes these natural social consequences are actually more impactful than the lessons we try to impose onto our children. So this is really great for siblings playing together or for kids playing alone.

And I honestly recommend that you have a little bit of both if you can. If you can manage giving them space to play all by themselves sometimes, that's great. If it's always with siblings, that's awesome too, because not only are they learning these social skills, they're also bonding. Isn't that what we want in our families? Don't we want our children to have connection, shared memories, sense of belongings, and really a foundation for a lifelong sibling friendship?

The next skill that children get from independent play is self confidence. There's actually something deeply empowering for a child when they realize that they can entertain themselves and that they can create something from nothing. You may have heard that boredom is the best gift you can give your child. And I would say that's true, especially when you back off and let them figure it out for themselves. So this fosters confidence, independence, and a healthy self esteem.

And lastly, I just want to reiterate the social skills that are built from independent play because I want to differentiate a little bit. of all, when independent play is happening alone, it is still supporting social development by allowing kids to practice imaginary conversations, storytelling, and role plays with their toys and their dolls. It's like they're rehearsing real life scenarios. And they're learning how to be the mom, how to comfort the doll that got hurt, or how to serve the tea party to their toys, or how to rescue the victims that got hurt. They're putting themselves into different roles because they're playing all the roles.

And that is an amazing opportunity to learn empathy, perspective taking, and even communication. And in this situation, I'm mainly just talking about independent play in your own home throughout the day in little segments. We will have plenty of episodes talking about independent play out in nature and unsupervised social time with friends. But for right now, I'm just mostly talking about you in your own home day to day. And this is why I'm going to get to the next point I want to make, which is why independent play is such a gift to yourself.

Because let's be real, when our kids are playing independently, it is an absolute lifesaver for us. It allows us a moment to pause, to lay down, to get a bite to eat, maybe even to meditate or pray or read scripture, this is a moment that we can take for ourselves to take care of ourselves. Allowing our kids to play independently also actually allows us to be a more mindful parent because we're allowing ourselves to not just constantly react to every little demand or need, but to be able to respond more thoughtfully and intentionally when they do need us and to teach them that sometimes I'm going to take a pause and you're gonna have to figure it out on your own. And when I come back and when I enter back into the dynamic here, I will be more present and I will respond to you. Lastly, allowing our kids to play independently is a protection for us against the dangerous cycle of constant overstimulation and burnout.

We need to have some time that allows us to just take care of ourselves, to let our mind work in a different way, that's not just in mommy mode, to maybe get something done that has needed to get done, or just to rest. Like I said, I know it sounds so unheard of to rest in motherhood, but what if you built that into your day? What if that was part of your intentional parenting was to be able to have a moment to rest? Now you're probably thinking this all sounds too good to be true. My kids don't play like that.

There's no way my kids would do this. But you're going to want to stick around because I'm going to teach you in the next episode how to actually teach and encourage independent play with your kids so that you can have this kind of experience because I want you to be able to be present when it's time to be present and pause and take a moment to care for yourself when you have the chance to do that, while also allowing your kids to develop emotional regulation, social skills, creative problem solving in a way that they're supposed to, which is through play. So stick around for the next episode, and we'll talk all about how to teach independent play. I'll see you next time on Intentional Motherhood.