Roomtime

When Brody was a baby we had what's called playpen time. We'd put him in his playpen (usually while I was cooking dinner) so that he could have some playtime alone. We got out of the habit during one of our vacations and never got back into the routine. In preparation for working from home, we decided that it's time to get back into the routine with roomtime.

The purpose of roomtime is to teach Brody to learn to play quietly by himself for a period of time. It helps him learn to focus and to play independently without having someone or something there to "entertain" him. Saturday (day 1 of roomtime) he cried for the entire 15 minutes). Yesterday we had a morning and an afternoon roomtime. The first one was 15 minutes (he cried about 10 minutes of it) and the second one was 20 minutes (he only cried about 5 minutes).

Today I took him upstairs and told him he was going to get to play by himself for a little while. I set the timer for 25 minutes and went back downstairs. He cried for about a minute...and then I heard the banging around of him playing with his toys!!! YAY!!! My goal is to have a morning and afternoon roomtime of 30 minutes each. Not only will it teach him to play independently (he's the kind of kid that wants someone playing with him all the time making it hard to get anything done around the house) but it will also allow me extra time to get work done! I can't tell you how much he's gonna love having a brother to play with (of course we'll have to wait for "bubba" to get big enough to play with first)!

Here's what I found when I walked upstairs this morning after the timer went off. He was saying, "Mommy!!!" He then ran to get a toy for me to play with him.