Yet another exciting opportunity to help our children grow and develop their social skills and abilities!
Here’s the situation: You’re in a game with your amazing lovable child and you guys are having the absolute best time playing together… he/she is completely connected with you in the game, looking, laughing, communicating with you in so many wonderful ways… then, your child gets up from the activity and begins to walk away…
What can we do here to help our children?
•Something very exciting to try is calling your child back to the activity! This can be something very fun and useful when you are with your children! In an exciting and playful way call them back over (e.g. “Wait a minute mister, we still have more of the game to do… we can still __________” (then here you want to show your child yet again how exciting the game can be: so use this opportunity to entertain them, remind them how fun the activity is by using what they are most motivated for in the game and give give give)!
Then call them back again using those 3E’s “Come on over! This is great!”
•If your child hasn’t been gone for more than 30 seconds, then yes this is still prime game time! Continue to play your game with them.
•If you have tried calling your child back to the game 2 times and they still haven’t come back to the activity with you, then it is time to join your child in what they are doing! Join join join with those same 3 E’s!!
Lets think about it this way:
When your child is walking away you still have room here to help your child interact with you because you were just in a game with them and, they just walked away, but your child is not yet committed to something new. If they go off and ism then you would definitely join them, in fact any time your child leaves an activity, gets out something new and specifically starts isming: you always drop what doing and start joining.
Enjoy your beautiful children and enjoy calling them back to the games you are playing!!