Keeping children engaged

The biggest responsibility of a parent is to keep the child engaged - mentally and physically.

It is harder now than before because of:

1. Nuclear families - earlier, there were uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins living under one roof. Some one will be available to play with the kids or tell stories.

2. Parents working - Most of the families I see both the parents working. So it is hard for parents to dedicate their time to kids as both of them feel like their jobs are equally important and who will make that 1-2 hours sacrifice to spend with the kids. In some cases, one of the parents have a good work-life balance and so they can spend that time.

3. No 9-5 jobs - Most of the parents are in ‘flexible work’ setup meaning, they have to be flexible to work for more than 9 hours, which means lesser time for kids and not able switch off the work mode.

It is also easier now than before and this post is about how kids can be engaged:

1. Worksheets and Coloring sheets - These activities are for the times when kids are bored at home, it is good for them to be bored and usually they get creative with whatever is lying around in the house (usually cardboard boxes). That is called “free play” - they figure out things to do by themselves and that is very important for children. If they are coming and asking you to play with them and you are busy then what works for me is giving them coloring pages or worksheets. For worksheets,

   https://www.k5learning.com/ is a great resource, they have downloadable worksheets that are categories by grades and subjects.

   The other activity is coloring sheets. I usually go to

   https://coloringhome.com/ to download and print pages for my 5yo.

   White boards are great investments too, you can play pictionary with them or you can just ask them to draw and tell you what happened in school.

   

   4yo showing us what happened in her school carnival

2. Screen time - Good series on streaming channels (YouTube, NetFlix, Hotstar etc) - there are great series on these streaming channels. Of course it depends on the age of your child. My daughter grew up watching these shows

   1. Peppa pig (3yo)

   2. Ben and Holly (3yo)

   3. Puffin Rock (3yo)

   4. InBestigators (4-5yo) (4 school kids investigating things in school)

   5. Storybots (4yo-5yo) - learns about how things work (eg. how does locks work, about planets and solar system etc)

   6. Number blocks (4yo-5yo) - learns about numbers

   7. Octonauts(4-5yo) - sea adventures, very educational about animals and planet

3. Audio stories - when her TV time is over and if she still wants some stories when she is coloring or doing some other activity, I usually play some audio stories as she can be engaged but without any screen time. I prefer spotify for audio stories podcast. Some of the audio stories/music that she listens are :

   1. Lingo kids

   2. Wiggles

   3. Kids corner bible stories

   4. You can search and find a lot more to suit your needs.

   NOTE: if you want to know if a particular movie is good for your kids and if it aligns with your values this is a great site- https://www.movieguide.org/

4. Crafts - She loves to do DIY crafts, so we buy her a lot of those from Amazon.in.

5. Library subscription - My 5yo loves to read stories and library subscription is a big money saver and space saver for us. I would definitely recommend getting a subscription and getting new books every two weeks.

The fundamental idea is for you to identify what their interests(not tv) are and nurturing that. When we give these activities to keep her engaged, one of us(parents) is usually in the same room doing our things.

Also, it is important to spend time with kids. At least 1 hour a day, go for a walk or take the child to the park and play with them ( we have been fortunate with good workplace, so are able to spend at least 3 hours everyday with kids post-school hours). They will have a lot of questions, answer them and if you don’t know then both of you can be curious about it together and find answers. Remember their learning is only limited by your teaching.

These are some of the things that have worked for us. Please let us know what are other resources that we can try, in the comments 👇🏼.

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