6 yo ds needs constant playing but wont play by himself

amother

Black

Tue, Jun 21 2016, 10:20 am

He needs to learn, 6 is well past time to be able to entertain oneself. One of my brothers was like this at around that age. My mom had him "earn" time playing together with her. Don't remember the exact deal, but it was something like every hour of self entertainment bought 20 minutes of mom entertainment. He built up the skill and within a few weeks he was capable and happy enough that he could play by himself for reasonable amounts of time without needing her to play with him and since she got reasonable blocks of time to attend to other children and other stuff, she didn't need to "sell" her time to him either.

FranticFrummie

Tue, Jun 21 2016, 10:53 am

I wanted to add that my DD is an only child. Because of her bad reaction to the pertussis vaccine, I was told that she could not be in any kind of group children's environment until she was 5 years old. Pertussis was epidemic in our area at the time. Sad

I was divorced when she was 2, so it was just her and me, stuck in a tiny studio apartment. Our street was incredibly dangerous (gang activity) and she could never be outside without me. Oh that was hard!

Not only that, because of her Fragile X Syndrome, one of the signs is that she prefers adult company, and has terrible social skills with peers. Eventually she got some help from school, but it didn't do very much. She's 13 now, and is just now getting the hang of being around kids her age and entertaining herself. She's still very rigid and bossy with other kids, but it's so much better than it used to be!

I guess what I'm saying is, if you persist in forcing your son to find ways to entertain himself, it will slowly get better with time and maturity. Coddling "boredom" is doing him a great disservice.