How Social is your Toddler?

I have always been honest about my immense dislike for soft play, playgrounds and, well, areas that involve a high volume of children in a condensed space. This hasn’t improved and while I recently ‘took one for the team’ and visited the ‘fun zone’ (ha, the irony), my delightful toddler played alone, or with me!

Do you sense the sarcasm?

On a weekend just gone, we went for a lovely pub lunch then walk with a bunch of friends and their children. My friend’s son, Bertie, aged 5 and an absolute delight was there and Barney had a wonderful time running/scootering round the park with him.

On the way home in the car, he asked if he could go for a sleepover at Bertie’s house. The following morning he asked if he was seeing Bertie today. He enquired again that afternoon when he would be seeing Bertie next. We have the same when we visit our friends in Suffolk and their two daughters, who Barney adores. Daily, we face the questioning about when we will be seeing them next. Regularly he asks me to take pictures of him to ‘send to Cora and Molly’. The dramatic parental guilt inside warns me that he is probably scared they will forget who he is, and this is his way of reminding them not to.

It really made me think about the amount time he spends with other children, outside of nursery that is. The fact that he goes to nursery three, often four, full days a week has always been my reasoning behind me not feeling bad that come the weekend he hangs with us adults. He is never short of attention, in fact he is spoilt with it, and while we don’t exactly expect him to sit in the pub all day, he doesn’t always spend his weekends messing around with other kids.

Without going down the only child route, is this common place with most of you lot at the weekend? How social is your toddler?  I love to worry and over analyse things, so this has been on my mind quite a bit of late. Not enough to make me want to arrange a play date at soft play, but it’s on my mind all the same.

Interestingly, as I was writing this post, some research arrived in my inbox from Diddi Dance who have spoken to 2000 parents about how social their under 5’s are. Findings revealed that the importance of children socialising amongst adults seems to have been misjudged, as 65% didn’t feel that time spent with adults is as important as the amount of time their child socialises with other children, despite 43% acknowledging that children socialising with adults is important to their mental development. Government guidelines advise us that building confidence through socialisation before the age of 5 is crucial, and therefore finding a balance between adult and child play is important.

Hmmmm, perhaps it isn’t all so bad that he spends his weekends playing with us old folk then?

Related posts:

Parents let loose… A ‘holiday’ with a toddler Being up in the night with a toddler