In today’s episode I’m talking to Susie Allison, the woman behind Busy Toddler. As a  former teacher and mom of 3 kids, she is an advocate for early childhood education and made it her mission to bring hands-on learning and play back to childhood, support others in their parenting journey, and help everyone make it to nap time. We discussed the following:

• Why it’s okay not to love playtime
• Why you don’t need to play with kids all day long
• Not all kids are great at independent play from the start
• How to use playtime/awake time to complete chores

Find out more about Susie Allison on her website Busytoddler.com or via Instagram @busytoddler

00;00;01;03 – 00;00;24;15

Susie Allison

So what I really want to work on with parents and caregivers today is this understanding that we need to turn back the clock on planning, and we need to look back at play. When we were children, and especially when our parents were children, what did play look like in those households? Was the parent actively sitting down, playing with the child all day long, or were they getting other things done, letting the children play, letting the children have their space?

 

00;00;24;18 – 00;00;49;12

Dr. Mona

Welcome to this week’s episode where I am welcoming one of my favorite Instagram account, Susie Allison, who is a former teacher, the founder and creator of Busy Toddler, the author of Busy Toddlers Guide to Actual Parenting, and is in charge of selling and organizing a famous preschool at home called Playing Preschool, where you can purchase this on her website and through her Instagram.

 

00;00;49;19 – 00;00;59;22

Dr. Mona

We are talking all about the misconceptions about playtime and child development, and I am so excited to welcome her because she is one of my favorite accounts on social. Thank you for joining me today Suzy.

 

00;01;00;02 – 00;01;06;03

Susie Allison

Oh my gosh, I am so excited! This has been such a long time coming and I’m just excited to be here today.

 

00;01;06;05 – 00;01;21;11

Dr. Mona

I love it! I am so excited to again, we’ve been trying to make this happen. Busy schedules. You are also a mother. I didn’t even mention that. But people should know you if they don’t know you already, you’re going to learn about her. Everybody listening? But yes, you are a mother. You are now getting your master’s correct.

 

00;01;21;18 – 00;01;31;27

Susie Allison

Yes. I’m. I’m weeks away from graduating with my master’s in early childhood education, and I. You know, what I’m really ready for is not having homework. I’m really ready for that. I’m ready.

 

00;01;31;27 – 00;01;48;04

Dr. Mona

I’m so grateful that you again were able to record this with me. When you’re obviously managing busy toddler, your family and then also your master. So this is a long time coming. But no, I don’t blame you at all for having to reschedule. And me, you know, trying to find something that works. So again, thank you for joining me today.

 

00;01;48;06 – 00;01;49;24

Susie Allison

I so happy to be here.

 

00;01;49;27 – 00;02;02;24

Dr. Mona

So tell me more about yourself and why you started Busy Toddler and the resources you started. What was something that you were seeing that was lacking in the social media space or educational space surrounding playtime and development? So I am.

 

00;02;02;24 – 00;02;22;26

Susie Allison

Truly like the old lady on Instagram. I started my account back in 2015. Like just so long ago. I started my account. My kids at the time were my oldest, had just turned two, and then my middle daughter at the time was five months old and I just felt I was drowning in early motherhood and I was having this feeling like, am I the only person who’s ever gone through this?

 

00;02;22;26 – 00;02;46;11

Susie Allison

Which of course I wasn’t, but it can feel so isolating. It can feel like that when you’re slogging through those trenches. And what was helping me to get things done each day was to figure out little short activities that I could set up for my son, and they became this incredible tool that I was using to connect with him, but also to be able to get my jobs done, to be able to take a break, to reset moods.

 

00;02;46;11 – 00;03;06;04

Susie Allison

And I started to wonder, could other people use this? Could this help other families the way that it’s been helping us in this kind of early phase in this very, you know, this phase that we’re in and I opened up Instagram one day, which is where I was kind of hanging out at the time, and I was like, gosh, I wonder if anybody else is sharing little activities for kids.

 

00;03;06;04 – 00;03;24;03

Susie Allison

And there wasn’t there wasn’t anybody else sharing really easy stuff that you could do with things around your house that you didn’t have to run out to Michael’s or Hobby Lobby and spend like $500 to get something that maybe they’ll play with for 15 seconds. And so I just started throwing together things I had around the house and posting them online.

 

00;03;24;03 – 00;03;30;04

Susie Allison

I grabbed the name Busy Toddler and I thought, this will work. And you know, it has worked. It sure has worked.

 

00;03;30;04 – 00;03;31;04

Dr. Mona

An amazing.

 

00;03;31;04 – 00;03;49;17

Susie Allison

It evolved from being just kind of me sharing activities that were working with my kids into me, sharing education tips and play research and parenting tips and all sorts of parts of motherhood and parenting that have really helped and impacted our family, and seeing if maybe they can help and impact other families in a positive way.

 

00;03;49;19 – 00;03;53;29

Dr. Mona

And you know, you’re not an old lady of Instagram. You are a trailblazer, a trailblazer.

 

00;03;54;00 – 00;03;56;07

Susie Allison

Yeah, I’ll use that for now. And instead I love it.

 

00;03;56;10 – 00;04;09;08

Dr. Mona

No. And I that’s so funny because yes, I mean, obviously there’s a lot more accounts now doing, stuff like education and play and all of that. But you are a pioneer and I again, you’re actually one of the big accounts I started following when I joined social.

 

00;04;09;08 – 00;04;10;03

Susie Allison

I joined, my gosh.

 

00;04;10;03 – 00;04;28;07

Dr. Mona

Thursday night, 2018 I apologize. So three years after you, but a lot of accounts were created in the pandemic, you know, that. But I loved following you. And I still love following you because I learned so much, even though we’re not doing the exact same thing. Like, I learned about social media just by watching other people do their thing on social media.

 

00;04;28;08 – 00;04;50;17

Dr. Mona

Yeah. So thank you. I mean, not only that, connecting with someone who is like minded in philosophy, it’s always cool when that happens, but I’m totally open to connecting with people who don’t share my philosophy. So just like your general approach to parenting and, just the again, the kindness that you have it, like it’s very obvious when I’m following you that you are who you are in real life.

 

00;04;50;17 – 00;04;52;16

Dr. Mona

Also, I don’t know if that makes sense. No, it.

 

00;04;52;16 – 00;05;07;24

Susie Allison

Does. When I meet people out in public that is generally what people say, which makes me feel good because I know I’m presenting myself the right way. They say you’re exactly who you are. And I say, yeah, I know, I don’t know how I could be any different. I, you know, I’m not a good actor, so I don’t think I could pretend to be not me.

 

00;05;08;00 – 00;05;22;22

Dr. Mona

I’m going to be so honest that I. It’s not always the case. Right? I mean, I know social media people who are on social media, that I’m like, I know them in real life. And then I also know them on their social. And I’m like, oh, there’s some discrepancy here. So I appreciate that because that’s an authentic self.

 

00;05;22;22 – 00;05;45;02

Dr. Mona

And obviously this being on social is not easy by any means. For sharing your family and all the stuff that we share on social. But again, thank you for what you’re doing. And also all the resources you have. I mean, it’s not only yeah, not only is it the things that I learn from your Instagram, but also your book, The Playing Free School, which again, describe what the playing preschool is, again, because that my son is not yet in that age, but it’s something that obviously I’m probably gonna end up meeting.

 

00;05;45;09 – 00;06;02;27

Susie Allison

Yeah. So back in 2017, I was so discouraged by the rising cost of preschool and how much that was going to cost a family like mine. I have three kids and so multiple years of preschool, and we’re talking moderately priced preschool in an area that I live was going to end up costing our family about $30,000 by the end of it.

 

00;06;02;27 – 00;06;23;24

Susie Allison

And, well, I couldn’t fathom that amount. And I thought, there has to be a way that we can empower parents and caregivers to be taking on the role of education at their home, if that’s something that they feel like they’re capable of doing or have a passion to do or financially like we were facing, it was not in the cards to do these multiple years.

 

00;06;23;26 – 00;06;47;01

Susie Allison

And so I used my kids as guinea pigs, and I wrote out a full preschool program, it’s 190 days of home learning, play based, hands on my style of learning, where it’s very easy, breezy stuff around the house. It’s not heavy. There’s no worksheet. It takes 45 minutes to an hour a day, and you can do it with a baby on your hip, which I proved when I was writing it, when I was writing it.

 

00;06;47;03 – 00;07;10;06

Susie Allison

And I finished writing the first year and we launched on the website, and immediately I started writing the second year of the program, because I knew there were families that were going to want a multiple year experience of preschool at home, and some families use it solely as their preschool option. Some families use it as something to do before they send their child to preschool, and some use it as their window into whether or not their family wants to homeschool.

 

00;07;10;08 – 00;07;30;08

Susie Allison

And so it’s kind of taking on all these different facets. And then of course, mid-March hits 2020. And I was so blessed to have this program that so many families could then access and use. And it really was just such a joy to see it spread at that point and be able to help in a time when we needed so much help.

 

00;07;30;11 – 00;07;45;10

Dr. Mona

Well, that is some pretty strong divine timing that you can have. You know, we would have never even anticipated that the pandemic happened when you created this piece. When I was just going to say, because I didn’t remember when you launched that and the fact that you launched two before the pandemic, just to show you just you knew that this is a resource.

 

00;07;45;10 – 00;07;51;29

Dr. Mona

And yes, people really needed it in the pandemic because, yeah, a lot of people didn’t send their kids, you know, to preschool. What age group is it?

 

00;07;52;02 – 00;08;15;02

Susie Allison

It’s for ages two and a half to five years old. So it’s a really strange. Yeah, it’s a really broad age range. And I did that on purpose because so often we get tied down into kind of workbooks. Yes and no answers with kids. And in education we call that closed learning, where there’s really only one answer. And, you know, we find it in the back of the book, but this is instead an open ended program where you’re asking really broad questions that can be answered differently.

 

00;08;15;02 – 00;08;33;09

Susie Allison

At two and a half, and then we’re going to be answered at five years old and they’re going to attack a problem or attack some thinking or an activity in a different way. But it works for all those ages. It just opens itself up to multiple kids, multi age learning in a family or a broad range, depending on when your child is ready to start it.

 

00;08;33;11 – 00;08;49;15

Dr. Mona

Love it. And we are going to start talking about the misconception about play plan. But if you all are curious why I’m talking to Susie so much, like I’ve been waiting for this conversation for so long just to talk to her about her life, all of that. And I’m sure you all are too, because you may likely follow her as well.

 

00;08;49;19 – 00;08;55;06

Dr. Mona

So you are getting your master’s and you were working as a teacher. What level were you teaching?

 

00;08;55;08 – 00;08;58;05

Susie Allison

I was teaching kindergarten in first grade before I left.

 

00;08;58;09 – 00;09;11;10

Dr. Mona

So would you say most of your ideas, like all the things that you come up with, the play ideas, all of that? Was that from your training or is that also just a mix of being a mom that you were able to come up with these ideas and the curriculum and all of that? Was it a mix of both?

 

00;09;11;12 – 00;09;35;07

Susie Allison

It was really all driven from my years in education. I look back now at what I was able to accomplish in my time as a teacher, and I see all of that reflected in Busy Toddler in my parenting and, you know, in the way that I wrote playing preschool and just my general philosophies on how children learn and how we can support them as adults was so formed and so wrapped in the way that I was taught.

 

00;09;35;07 – 00;09;56;01

Susie Allison

My mom was a teacher, so it’s partly how I was raised. I was kind of always raised student teaching. I joke about that. I’m like, oh, I’ve been doing teaching since I was like nine years old. And so by the time I got my own classroom, I felt like a seasoned veteran, even though I was stepping into that role for the very first time, because my mom had prepared me so well to take on kind of the legacy that she was had in the classroom.

 

00;09;56;01 – 00;10;18;15

Susie Allison

She’s a phenomenal teacher, and so I really was taught this very different approach to how children learn and how we can best support them. And I thank my mom so much for that gift that she gave me of all these decades of training, because then when I was able to step in to teaching and then eventually step into a busy toddler and right playing preschool, it’s like everything that I’ve been working for came together.

 

00;10;18;17 – 00;10;20;16

Susie Allison

And one last little bow I did.

 

00;10;20;16 – 00;10;40;20

Dr. Mona

And you know what I have to say? And I know people who follow me or listen to me know that I’m very passionate about early childhood education, although I’m not a teacher or educator. Obviously, as a pediatrician, it’s very important to me. So I also believe that the teachers and anyone in education is very under supported in terms of time, finances.

 

00;10;40;20 – 00;10;57;28

Dr. Mona

Any one that works with children in general doesn’t get the resources they deserve, in my opinion. I’m just so excited for you that you have this platform where you can gain this. I know you’re not looking for notoriety and none of us do this for notoriety, hopefully, but I’m just very happy that your voice is out there because you deserve it.

 

00;10;57;28 – 00;11;21;22

Dr. Mona

Like, you really have done something really great with your education because you went into this wanting to help people. And that is awesome because it comes out that way. Like it’s very obvious that you truly care about children and about their education, and also about making parents not feel stressed about all of it, you know? But that’s what happens is that parents feel like I need to be doing X, Y, and Z, and everyone’s always creating these activities.

 

00;11;21;22 – 00;11;38;11

Dr. Mona

But I’ve never once felt for me to see that. Like when I’m looking at your page, I never get this vibe that, oh, here’s another activity that she’s doing. Like great. Like, no, I look at it, it’s like, wow, that’s such a great idea. Maybe I’ll do it, maybe I won’t. And I hope people are consuming your information that way too, that this is awesome information.

 

00;11;38;18 – 00;11;45;03

Dr. Mona

Do it if you want and take the stress out of play. Like that’s kind of what we want to do for you all in this episode too.

 

00;11;45;06 – 00;12;17;18

Susie Allison

Yeah. I think the big thing I wanted with my Instagram account when I started it was I just wanted to help families, to feel confident and to feel comfortable. In this role, the role of parenting can often be portrayed so negatively, and I’m not trying to be a Pollyanna or any sort of toxic positivity, but there is a joy in this and that has gotten so lost, and a lot of it gets lost in our lack of confidence and in, guilt that has kind of become something that’s so normalized on social media is this feeling of guilt that is there with parenting, and then it’s a guilt that just doesn’t need to be there.

 

00;12;17;18 – 00;12;42;00

Susie Allison

And so I want to actively work to help parents find that confidence and find their voice and find their best path. And that might not be the same as my path, but what I want to do is just share a path that is flexible and that you can look at and go, yeah, this could work for my family, or even more so go, no, that would never work for my family, but at least if identified won’t won’t work.

 

00;12;42;00 – 00;12;59;22

Susie Allison

And that is often a great thing. Or you might look at something I do and say, you know what? I think this could work. I’m going to tweak it this way. No different than the way you would tweak a recipe to make it fit for your family just the right way. I want people to be able to see the things that I share, and be able to find the right ingredients to make that something that’s palatable to their family.

 

00;13;00;06 – 00;13;18;19

Dr. Mona

I love that. And, you know, starting off with these misconceptions. So I know you share a lot of them on your social media. What would you say is one that you really want to talk about first? Something that you feel it is constantly either on social media or, you know, you were a teacher or even just in your social circle that you want to show off.

 

00;13;18;20 – 00;13;19;18

Dr. Mona

First off.

 

00;13;19;20 – 00;13;38;21

Susie Allison

I think the big one I want to squash, first off is that you don’t need to play with your child all day long. There is this major misconception that’s happened within, and it’s evolved over the last 20 years in parenting that the role of parenting is to entertain the child, and that we are to be at the child’s every, you know, beck and call and at their every whim.

 

00;13;38;21 – 00;14;07;00

Susie Allison

And if we’re not doing that, then we’re not doing a great job parenting. And that isn’t the case. And it actually is causing issues on both sides, on the parenting side and on the child side. On the child side, when children play without an adult, that is the best kind of play that a child can do. And so when you look at a child and you see that child either playing alone or with other children, but there isn’t an adult presence actively playing with them, those kids, that child is doing the most important work that they can be doing.

 

00;14;07;00 – 00;14;28;12

Susie Allison

That is the highest level of developmental work that is the most their body can put in at this time, and they are doing everything that they absolutely need to be doing. And then on the flip side, when we look at adults and we see adults forgoing their lunch because they need to play with their child or skipping showers, or skipping their work or skipping chores around the house.

 

00;14;28;12 – 00;14;50;11

Susie Allison

And then this burden and this mountain and this pile of life ends up on their shoulders to accomplish after the child goes to bed with, then no time left for them to just sit down and decompress. That’s also not healthy for the parent. So what I really want to work on with parents and caregivers today is this understanding that we need to turn back the clock on play, and we need to look back at play.

 

00;14;50;11 – 00;15;12;03

Susie Allison

When we were children, and especially when our parents were children, what did play look like in those households? Was the parent actively sitting down, playing with the child all day long, or were they getting other things done, letting the children play, letting the children have their space? And I think a sub misconception of this is then that the parent is never engaging and never connecting with the child.

 

00;15;12;03 – 00;15;32;04

Susie Allison

And that goes with this idea that play is the only way that we can engage with children, and play is the only way that we can build a relationship with the child. And that’s so far from the truth. We can engage with our children and connect with them and show them our love over board games and puzzles and books and walks and talks and sitting on the floor and chit chatting and drawing a picture in a book.

 

00;15;32;06 – 00;15;55;18

Susie Allison

It is not exclusive to play. And when we instead invest all of our time in making sure our kids aren’t bored, that they’re entertained, that were present with them, you know, looking right at them and involved in their every bit of their lives. That really takes away from their development as a person, and it takes away from our development as a person.

 

00;15;55;20 – 00;16;21;08

Dr. Mona

And I love when you talk about our childhood, because when I look at parenting and education and advice, I do think about things from an evolutionary perspective. And I also think about things from, also our childhood with before tech, before things got a little crazy. I think our generation of parenting has made things more stressful for ourselves because of the comparison on social, because of the over information I always talk about with my mom like, mom, why do you think our generation is more stressed?

 

00;16;21;08 – 00;16;36;10

Dr. Mona

She’s like, it’s in your hand, it’s your cell phone. And I’m like, I know, I hear you. I think cell phones can cause more stress for parents, too, that you feel like you’re not doing enough when you’re actually doing all you need to do. And that concept of just letting them be and letting them kind of play for themselves is huge.

 

00;16;36;10 – 00;16;51;01

Dr. Mona

And yet, I think so much of us have forgotten that, like I vividly remember, and I’m sure you can when you were younger, all the kids just getting together in like a big room and just figuring out what was going to happen, there was no no scheduling anything for us. There was no parent saying, okay guys, here’s the toys.

 

00;16;51;05 – 00;17;12;01

Dr. Mona

Literally. We come up with like little ice skating on like our the floor of our garage. Like we do like little productions. There would be a, a team that would like vote on like who was the best big ice skater. We would create things like, so the creativity was there through boredom and also just the understanding that you got to figure it out kind of on your own sometimes, and the parents going to be there.

 

00;17;12;01 – 00;17;34;14

Dr. Mona

I think we forget that you’re not going anywhere if you’re allowing your child some independent playtime, or if you’re not playing with your child all day long, you’re there for them, like you said, in other ways. But they learn through that the moment that they’re alone, meaning you’re nearby cooking dinner or you just sitting with them like they learn so much troubleshooting and so much creativity through the process of playing on their own with you nearby.

 

00;17;34;14 – 00;17;35;20

Dr. Mona

You know, it’s so fascinating.

 

00;17;35;26 – 00;18;00;07

Susie Allison

It really is fascinating. And I think what, a quote that almost gets overused on social media, it’s from a philosopher a hundred years ago, Jean Piaget. And it’s the very simple phrase play is the work of childhood. And we see this kind of scattered everywhere as a reminder that children need to be playing. And this kind of harkens back, especially in the last ten years, as academic learning and early childhood has become this big push.

 

00;18;00;07 – 00;18;14;27

Susie Allison

And so then the pushback was, well, they don’t, you know, maybe necessarily need all this academic learning. What they really need is play. And play is the work of childhood. And we hear this over and over again. And what I constantly want to keep adding to that sentence is but not the work of adulthood.

 

00;18;15;00 – 00;18;15;26

Dr. Mona

Yeah, plays.

 

00;18;15;26 – 00;18;41;20

Susie Allison

The work of childhood, but not the work of adulthood. And somehow we have decided and taken it upon ourselves to be these play facilitators with our children. And it does come at a cost to both our development and their development, because we’re just not letting them have that space in that time. And I think one of the big misconceptions that parents have is that, well, my child doesn’t play well on their own.

 

00;18;41;20 – 00;19;00;20

Susie Allison

So then what other choice do I have? And I hear that I hear that if your child doesn’t play well on their own, it is a struggle. I have two children that came out of me knowing exactly how to self entertain. I have one who would like to reattach his umbilical cord. Oh that’s his. That’s his ideal.

 

00;19;00;20 – 00;19;01;02

Dr. Mona

Yes.

 

00;19;01;07 – 00;19;20;06

Susie Allison

Like birth was traumatic. Yeah. Birth was hard for him because he had to leave me. Like this is what he never would have chosen. Never would have chosen this. And it’s hard when you have a child who doesn’t play well on their own, because then you really do want to say, well, this is such a simple thing. Why can’t you do this?

 

00;19;20;06 – 00;19;33;06

Susie Allison

So here I’m just going to do it with you. And what that ends up doing is it gets us in this cycle. It’s just kind of a, you know, one of those circular things where because the child doesn’t know how to play, then we play with the child, and then the child doesn’t learn how to play, and then we’re back to playing with the child.

 

00;19;33;06 – 00;19;58;22

Susie Allison

And it just kind of keeps going. So we have to actively work to build this skill. And I think that’s another big issue right now is that we think that play is something intrinsic in kids, and it is to an extent, but it can be difficult in other kids, in other situations, depending on the child’s personality, depending on family structure, all sorts of different things can make independent play harder for some kids.

 

00;19;58;24 – 00;20;16;12

Susie Allison

So instead, what I like to encourage parents is to look at this like it’s a marathon and we wouldn’t say to our kids, well, we’re going to run a marathon, so tomorrow we’re going to do it 26 miles. Let’s go. We would never do that. We know that’s not going to work. So instead we’re going to build this skill and we’re going to build it together.

 

00;20;16;12 – 00;20;35;07

Susie Allison

And so the ways that we can do that with our kids are actually pretty simple. First we’re going to set a boundary. I’m not available for play. Here’s what I’m going to be doing while you’re playing and you have work to do I have an email I need to answer, or I’m taking this phone call, or I’m unloading this dishwasher and you’re going to go play.

 

00;20;35;10 – 00;20;57;18

Susie Allison

And if we can set this up at a really predictable point every day, if we can think about play with the same reverence that we give to sports and classes and clubs, if we can also give that same time commitment to a child’s alone play time without an adult, that will be so beneficial. So perhaps for your family, it looks like after breakfast in the morning, that’s when you’re going to go off and play.

 

00;20;57;18 – 00;21;11;26

Susie Allison

And so you talk to your child about that. You’re going to go off and play after breakfast. This is going to happen every single day. So there’s nothing to be worried about or scared about. It’s a totally normal part of your day. And while you’re doing that, I’ll be cleaning up the kitchen and, you know, getting lunches ready in this, that.

 

00;21;11;26 – 00;21;27;21

Susie Allison

And, you know, you can list off your jobs. Never be afraid to tell your children about all the hard work you’re putting in to life and to making things run smoothly. Let them see your hard work and let them see what that looks like to build this home community. So we’re going to schedule it. We’re going to talk about it.

 

00;21;27;21 – 00;21;46;13

Susie Allison

And then we’re going to start with five minutes. That’s all we’re going to start with. And you’re going to set what’s called a visual timer. And if you haven’t seen a visual timer before go online, Google it, head to Amazon. You’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. It’s a timer for children where they can actually see it’s a little red bar, and it’s going to start to shrink as the time goes down.

 

00;21;46;13 – 00;22;05;08

Susie Allison

And then the child can see because for kids, time is so abstract that five minutes might as well be five years. They have no idea. So let’s take that stress away and let’s make it five minutes that they can see. And then the second that five minutes is over, you’ll hear the little beep. You’ll come to them, hey, our playtime right now is over, you know, and you can talk.

 

00;22;05;08 – 00;22;22;09

Susie Allison

Do you want to continue? I have more things I need to do. Maybe we read a book really quick, but you reconnect with the child and you get them centered again. Or you see that they’re playing nicely and you back out of the room without interrupting them, because that is always a joy to see when you come in after your set time and you’re like, oh my gosh, they’re really doing it.

 

00;22;22;09 – 00;22;39;19

Susie Allison

I’m just going to back away. I hope nobody saw me, and you’re going to really set this boundary. And it might mean that the first time you set this boundary, that they lay in the hallway and wait for you like they’re, you know, holding a little vigil, waiting for you to get back there. And you know what? That’s their decision.

 

00;22;39;21 – 00;23;02;09

Susie Allison

I can set the schedule and I can decide what we’re going to do, but it’s their responsibility to go off and play. And if what they want to do with their self entertaining time is stare at the ceiling, then I have to bless and release that. That’s on them. So I think one of the things that I would challenge parents who are feeling this weight of, well, this is great, that children need to be playing, but my child doesn’t play well alone.

 

00;23;02;11 – 00;23;23;23

Susie Allison

Let’s work on getting them to that point. Let’s set a schedule. Let’s start with five minutes. Let’s set a timer, let them know what your job is. And then maybe the most important, maintain that boundary once you’ve set it and said, I’m not available to play. You’re not available to play. Do your job. They will figure out what their job is going to be, whether that’s to play or to stare at the wall.

 

00;23;23;25 – 00;23;41;01

Susie Allison

And this will get easier. Just like any skill building gets easier in our adult lives, it can get it will get easier in their child lives, and you will see that you’ll start with five minutes and then ten, and then it will just start growing until you suddenly realize, oh my gosh, my child is really good at playing by themselves.

 

00;23;41;01 – 00;24;04;02

Susie Allison

Like I can really get stuff done. And I think the biggest payoff is when you notice that your child is really playing by themselves. And oh my gosh, I did this like I led them through this skill. But then also when you realize and I’m able to get things done and things are less stressful because of this, and that’s really where we’re trying to get to this sort of promised land or so.

 

00;24;04;04 – 00;24;19;06

Dr. Mona

In that Promised Land. It’s possible. And like you said, Susie, like, I think one of the biggest things for parents when they’re struggling with this is like where to even begin? Or there’s a thought that it’s just not going to work, my child, it won’t work for my child, but you won’t know until you try it, and you won’t know until you again build into it.

 

00;24;19;06 – 00;24;44;23

Dr. Mona

Because we’re not asking for, like you said, like a five hour play session because they’re not going to do that even if you did all this. But we’re asking for five minutes, and I love the timer trick. And I just think it really is something that can work. It’s kind of like if your family chose to sleep train and you have to build up the time intervals if you did that method, similar concept, obviously it’s a little different, but you have to kind of build up the time and then eventually they’re going to surprise you.

 

00;24;44;24 – 00;25;10;18

Dr. Mona

They will like they’ll surprise you and you’ll be like, I want to actually talk about this misconception. We’ll lead into this. You’ll be able to do your chores or whatever you need to do, and that’s one thing that you have talked about on your, platform a lot, and I completely agree, is always I think there’s a big misconception that parents feel like they have to do all of the household stuff when their baby or child is sleeping, when you actually make it a point to do it when the child is awake.

 

00;25;10;18 – 00;25;19;14

Dr. Mona

And I actually have done the same thing with Ryan since she was an infant, so I want to talk about that one next, because I think that’s a really great one. If parents haven’t heard that, if they’re listening to this episode.

 

00;25;19;17 – 00;25;40;17

Susie Allison

Yeah. So something I realized really early in my parenting was that I was so burnt out in the afternoon trying to shove, you know, an entire day’s worth of chores into that afternoon nap block. Yeah. And then from that time my child woke up from their nap until dinnertime was like the worst time. Then, because I was, again, so exhausted from all the work that I had just done all morning with them.

 

00;25;40;17 – 00;26;03;25

Susie Allison

And I was exhausted from the housework I done, and I was just burning the candle from both ends. And so I made a very conscious decision to start taking what I call a union break. And instead of rushing myself ragged during nap time and now during rest time and quiet time, I just sit and I have my lunch in peace, and I take my break and I recharge my batteries.

 

00;26;03;28 – 00;26;39;09

Susie Allison

And this gives me the energy and the umph that I need to then make it through the rest of the day with my child. And to be there and to to be more present. Because now I am fully recharged. I feel more like myself. I am ready to restart this time in our lives. So what I end up doing throughout the day is just kind of these five minute chores or blips, cleans, or when they’re playing, I vacuum the floor really quick or, you know, I wipe down the bathroom after I leave, or I’m quickly wiping down a countertop and I don’t save all of that up for nap time.

 

00;26;39;09 – 00;26;59;27

Susie Allison

Instead, I let my kids see me do this hard work. And that became the other part of this. Part number one was I needed a break. I needed a break in the same way that a worker gets a snack break and a lunch break and a bathroom break and a coffee break. I needed all of those breaks rolled up into one and I was going to take a nap time from 130 to 3.

 

00;26;59;29 – 00;27;20;04

Susie Allison

And then the other thing was, I realized my kids were not going to see me working hard on this house. They weren’t going to see all the work that went into keeping our family community, our home environment, clean and safe and ready for the next adventure and activity. They weren’t going to see all of that. If I hid it from them and did it during nap time.

 

00;27;20;04 – 00;27;37;06

Susie Allison

And so instead, I made this really specific choice that I was going to do this in front of them, which they can be a part of. They can see how it goes, and they can also see the hard work that it takes when there is a really big match, and then they can know what it takes to clean up something like that.

 

00;27;37;06 – 00;28;14;06

Susie Allison

And what a great opportunity for me to model this hard work and this dedication to our home space and this pride in the house that we have and the things that we have and the way that we take care of things. So while it was this decision to give myself a break and to honor the fact that I needed a break just as much as everybody else does in every other outside of the house job, it was also a chance to say, I want to make sure that they know what a hard worker I am, and that they can see time management and responsibility and pride of ownership and all these things.

 

00;28;14;06 – 00;28;32;18

Susie Allison

And I’m looking back now, my kids, my son turns nine next week and he is a great cleaner. He knows how to pick up tea. You know, I was sick a couple weeks ago and he ran the vacuum downstairs. How nice is that? And? And why? Because he knew how to do it. Because he’d seen me do it a bunch of times and he knew.

 

00;28;32;19 – 00;28;50;21

Susie Allison

Hey, usually in the morning, mom runs the vacuum on this, you know, area. So I’ll do it really quick. And they understand because they’ve seen it because it isn’t a mystery to them. There is an a cleaning fairy that comes and resets the house every night while they’re asleep, or resets the house while they’re at naptime. They get to see and they get to be a part of it.

 

00;28;50;23 – 00;28;54;17

Susie Allison

And I think that’s a really cool thing to let our kids in on.

 

00;28;54;19 – 00;29;10;16

Dr. Mona

And I think it goes in line with all the other things I already mentioned, like trying to foster independent play, you know, remembering that you don’t need to play with your kids all day long. This is how you create time for yourself, because during playtime awake time, you’re completing the tasks that are going to be done anyways in the home.

 

00;29;10;16 – 00;29;29;29

Dr. Mona

And I agree with you. Like I remember when Ryan was an infant, like one thing that we did is that I would always wash the dishes while he was still in his highchair, like the highchair was on our island so he could see me, so he would just play after he was done eating, and he would just look at me and we would sing and laugh while I was doing dishes so he could see that we eat, and then we do dishes, and it’s all part of the whole production of what we do.

 

00;29;29;29 – 00;29;44;17

Dr. Mona

And now he’s part of it, right? He knows at 13, you know, if you can’t bring your kid to the island or where you’re doing dishes or you don’t have that set up, it’s perfectly fine. But we normalized it from a very young age. And the other day, like, he spilled all this rice and I was trying to vacuum it up.

 

00;29;44;17 – 00;29;59;17

Dr. Mona

And then the vacuum broke and he brought his toy vacuum, and it was like, mama. And we call it we call all of our appliances name. So our vacuum is Bernard. It’s just a name that we’ve made all of this. So he calls him nard and he’s like, nard, nard broke. And I was like, yeah, an hour broke because it just something happened.

 

00;29;59;21 – 00;30;21;06

Dr. Mona

She’s like, mama nard. So he goes to bring his play vacuum and he’s trying to vacuum up the rice. And I’m like, you’re so sad. But it’s just to me, it’s like it’s such an important thing. And I think it is a misconception that, you know, I think we were able to do that because one, I do value independent play and I also value that, hey, when you’re awake and your play time, I’m going to get the stuff done and you’re going to either help me or watch me.

 

00;30;21;06 – 00;30;36;26

Dr. Mona

And now as they get older, they’ll have the cognitive ability to start to help you and obviously the motor skills to be able to help you. But as an infant, you’re still exposing them to that concept. So don’t think that you have to start this when you’re three, you’re 12 three. You can start the concept in infancy like you did.

 

00;30;36;26 – 00;30;53;29

Dr. Mona

Like it definitely can help you. And then you gain time where during that time you can actually sit or maybe read or work on a podcast, which is like what I used to do. That way I was able to build my passion while he was napping was something I think a little bit that people don’t realize. That’s how you’re able to do all this.

 

00;30;53;29 – 00;30;54;12

Dr. Mona

Oh my gosh.

 

00;30;54;12 – 00;31;11;02

Susie Allison

Same. I’ve built all of busy toddler during naptime. All of it was built during nap times. There was people would ask like, oh, will, do you know when you’re working or something else? And, well, the kids aren’t really that aware at that early age of what I was actually doing because I would do it when they were sleeping, but that was like my hobby.

 

00;31;11;02 – 00;31;22;19

Susie Allison

The same way that someone might sit down on the couch and knit or cross-stitch or, you know, journal or read a book. For me, it was making pin images and editing, editing blog post.

 

00;31;22;21 – 00;31;30;12

Dr. Mona

I love these misconceptions. What would be one final misconception? I know there’s probably plenty that we can go over. What would be one final one that you’d want to share today?

 

00;31;30;14 – 00;31;52;26

Susie Allison

I think another big one that is such a misconception is that we need to be coming up with these elaborate play ideas for. Yes, and and I know that here I am, like the activities account lady. And I’m saying, you know what you really don’t need to do. But here’s what I’m going to say. Activities are a tool, and the way that I’ve always treated activities at my house is that this is a tool to help my kids and to help our family.

 

00;31;52;26 – 00;32;12;06

Susie Allison

It’s not necessarily something that we need every single day. There are many days that go by that I don’t need to use an activity for my kids. Of course, I post them on Instagram all the time because I know that someone else is having a day where they probably need an activity as a tool, but I really want to challenge people to think about is that these activities, these are a tool.

 

00;32;12;12 – 00;32;38;20

Susie Allison

This is a way to reset if the day is long, if things aren’t going well, if one child is fighting with another, if someone can’t find their play, if you are needing a break, if just it isn’t flowing right, grab an activity. That’s the whole reason I started doing these. I grabbed these as a tool to help my parenting, not as an expectation or yet another thing to weigh down on me as though if I don’t do this, my child won’t go to Harvard.

 

00;32;38;22 – 00;32;58;12

Susie Allison

That’s not what these play ideas are at all. These activities are a way to just hit the reset button, and nine times out of ten, maybe even more than that, 9.9 times out of ten, if my children are having a rough morning and I decide to set up a little activity for them, they leave that activity ready for independent play and ready to go play.

 

00;32;58;12 – 00;33;15;07

Susie Allison

Something about it just resets their brain. I don’t spend long putting these together. You never want to spend more than a couple of minutes. You never want to spend a ton of money on play ideas. If you’re seeing that this activity is going to cost a ton of money to set up, or a ton of work to put together, that is not the right activity for you.

 

00;33;15;07 – 00;33;39;14

Susie Allison

Skip it. But really, instead, just look at these activities as yet another thing that you can put in your toolbox to help your child find their play. So if you have a morning where your kids really, really, really are struggling to get that independent play down and you just really need a break and you need something instead of giving up or just being frustrated and tossing in the towel on the day, try an activity.

 

00;33;39;14 – 00;33;54;27

Susie Allison

My favorites are always bathtub activities. Put them in the tub, add a bunch of Legos, put them in the tub, add a bunch of blocks, put them in the tub, add a bunch of popcorn balls and they come out of that experience. Reset and ready to go and ready to find their play. They’ve gotten this connection with you.

 

00;33;54;27 – 00;34;04;07

Susie Allison

They’ve gotten their buckets filled, and they’re just so much more ready to take on on the hard work that they have to do that day, which is, of course, their play.

 

00;34;04;09 – 00;34;23;09

Dr. Mona

And I think, oh, I love it because I think one of the reasons why I think parents get bogged down with the overwhelming of all the activities is some accounts, not yours. Okay. Some accounts talk about the activities related to a milestone, like the developmental milestones when that happens, I think that’s wonderful because I also love teaching about milestones.

 

00;34;23;09 – 00;34;41;23

Dr. Mona

Okay, don’t get me wrong. And I think it’s important. But when you start to group okay, do this activity to reach this outcome, then you’ve kind of lost the joy of the moment because you’re trying to reach an outcome and you’re having an expectation that, okay, I’m going to do this, that my child starts to roll or my child starts to reach for this object, or my child for to say these words and that’s important.

 

00;34;41;23 – 00;34;58;29

Dr. Mona

Don’t get me wrong. We want to reach milestones, but every kid is different. And also it’s not. So much is like you do that activity in the next year. The child’s going to talk or walk or do whatever, right? So I love that, you know, when we are looking at activities, everyone like, I mean, I’m guilty of it too because I do teach about milestones and talk about activities.

 

00;34;58;29 – 00;35;16;29

Dr. Mona

But you have to remember to the reason you’re playing with your kid. The reason is not to reach an outcome of they’re going to go to Harvard, or they’re going to do this or they’re going to walk. It should be to foster, like you said, a tool of interaction. And you’re going to foster their development just from even the social and emotional is a type of interaction, right?

 

00;35;16;29 – 00;35;36;02

Dr. Mona

From being with you, cognitive from playing alone, like you’re not always going to reach a visual outcome or an auditory outcome. Like I think a lot of parents end up trying to look for, but it’s all a big picture here. And I’m sure you agree that sometimes we get bogged down in that sort of expectation outcome. Okay, I check this box now.

 

00;35;36;02 – 00;35;46;29

Dr. Mona

My kid is doing this and writing their letters and doing this, and then I succeeded. But no, like, did you enjoy it? Like, did you actually enjoy the process and the learning for everyone involved? You know?

 

00;35;47;02 – 00;36;11;21

Susie Allison

Exactly. I think so often in early childhood especially, we look at things as a product instead of the process, and we get really invested in kids meeting certain goals and certain benchmarks at certain times. And instead, what we need to remember is that learning and what we’re on right now is a journey. And what’s happening on this journey and what’s happening with our kids.

 

00;36;11;28 – 00;36;31;13

Susie Allison

That’s where the good stuff is happening. We’re not out here trying to find some end goal and trying to, you know, meet some end mark where we’re living and we’re teaching them to learn and to think and to be and to create. And we need to give them that space to do that without our own preconceived ideas of what the end goal should be.

 

00;36;31;13 – 00;36;50;08

Susie Allison

And so if we can kind of reframe our parenting and take a step back and say, you know, I don’t necessarily want to do this so that you, you know, end up becoming, you know, the world’s greatest athlete. I’m going to do this because this is so much fun and we need something fun right now, and we need to take a break.

 

00;36;50;08 – 00;37;11;16

Susie Allison

And we need to do this so that we have a reset button. I think we often look at everything we do in childhood as though it has to meet some goal. Yeah, and instead we miss out on so much of the joy that is childhood, because we’re constantly looking for an explanation as to why we should bother doing that.

 

00;37;11;16 – 00;37;31;28

Susie Allison

And instead, everything in childhood is worthy, and everything is so beautiful and so amazing, and we lose out on so much of that when we’re constantly trying to justify or explain why it’s okay for us to just do things for fun, or to just do things because we needed to, or because that’s what’s going to help our morning.

 

00;37;31;28 – 00;37;39;04

Susie Allison

It doesn’t have to always be about the end product with kids. The process of childhood is so beautiful.

 

00;37;39;06 – 00;37;58;19

Dr. Mona

And you know, my final question has a lot to do with what you just mentioned, but also what we alluded to earlier about your mindset. Like, I agree that you, you know, you’re not toxic positivity. And the final question I have is I like to surprise my guest with what is your parenting high like if you can think of like a parenting high you’ve had and what is your parenting low?

 

00;37;58;22 – 00;38;12;17

Dr. Mona

The reason I like to do this is that it really shows the beauty that is parenting, that there’s going to be great moments and not so great moments, but that we can really learn from the not so great moments. So to share, if you will, what your Parenting high and parenting low has been so far.

 

00;38;12;20 – 00;38;31;12

Susie Allison

So I would say one of the highest moments for my parenting. And I actually wrote about this in my book. So I’m like, not trying to do a shameless blog, but this is part of my book. It was this moment when my kids were 15 months old and oh gosh, two and a half getting fuzzy now and four.

 

00;38;31;14 – 00;39;06;07

Susie Allison

And we had gone out for ice cream and I it was very impromptu and I set them down. And, you know, we got this ice cream and I put it on the table at this, ice cream place in our house. And I handed it to each kid, and they all sat there and they started eating. And I know this sounds so simple, but as I step back to kind of take this picture to send to my husband, I was so struck by how far we’d come in a year, because I remembered a year before we had tried to get ice cream, and it was such a disaster that I swore I would never be

 

00;39;06;07 – 00;39;31;07

Susie Allison

able to get ice cream with three kids on my own again. I ever, and I never would have done it. And instead, here we were, out by ourselves getting ice cream, which is not easy to eat. With three kids, I was even having an ice cream cone and everything was fine. No one dropped their ice cream, nothing fell and it was just this weight of this moment and my husband’s uncle had told us probably the best parenting advice we were given when we first became parents.

 

00;39;31;07 – 00;39;52;09

Susie Allison

And he said, you know, it’s all a phase. And everything kind of writes itself, or you figure out a way through it, or you figure out your best path. And that was that moment for me, realizing we had gotten through this phase of not being able to go get ice cream. And I know that sounds so simple. It’s ice cream, but it meant something.

 

00;39;52;09 – 00;40;11;26

Susie Allison

It’s stayed with me for years and years. Now there’s this beautiful moment of realizing how far the kids had come as children, and how far I had come as a parent that I was able to handle this, and I was able to juggle and to better understand their personalities and their needs and to meet them. And it was just such a great moment for me.

 

00;40;11;28 – 00;40;31;17

Susie Allison

That was just one of those love that absolute highs for me. And I think on the flip side of that, one of the lowest days I had just had my daughter, she was a month old, and I’m stuck at home with a 21 month old, a one month old, a C-section that was not healing the way I wanted it to heal.

 

00;40;31;19 – 00;40;47;15

Susie Allison

And I was so broken that day, and I wanted desperately to wrap her and to try to figure out how to wear her in a ring sling, because I thought, this is going to be the way that I’ll be able to manage having a 21 month old and a one month old, and I’m going to figure this out, and I couldn’t.

 

00;40;47;17 – 00;41;05;13

Susie Allison

And I got so frustrated and so angry at myself. And I sat on the top of the steps and I just sobbed, and I’m holding this newborn baby and I’m just sob ING openly. And my son, who was 21 months old at the time, heard me and came over and he just rested his head on my back and he just said, it will be fine.

 

00;41;05;15 – 00;41;24;16

Susie Allison

It will be fine. And it did end up fine. But oh my gosh, what a moment to just sit there and to realize I’m, I’m having a 21 month old comfort me. And I just felt like nothing was ever going to really, truly be fine again. And instead, what it meant was it was just going to be a new fine and a new different.

 

00;41;24;16 – 00;41;48;09

Susie Allison

And I had to release expectations of what I thought being a second time mom was going to look like, and I had to release expectations of what raising a toddler was now going to look like. I had a newborn, and it was just sitting there and having that moment of release, but also just acknowledging all those feelings of that moment and sitting there with those two children, knowing we were going to move forward.

 

00;41;48;11 – 00;41;56;09

Susie Allison

We’re going to get there. But it is going to be hard and hard is okay. And that was really what I had to admit to myself at that point.

 

00;41;56;12 – 00;42;13;24

Dr. Mona

I love ending these episodes with that question because again, it’s like people will come for the title, but then they get mean. These stories from my guest that humanizes them because we are all human. And like I said, Susie, I just love and resonate with you because you do share this mindset on life, that it’s hard, it’s amazing.

 

00;42;13;24 – 00;42;29;17

Dr. Mona

And you even mentioned like, you know, just trying to kind of roll with the punches a little bit. But that doesn’t take away the fact that there’s going to be grief and trauma and other things. It just is, hey, I’m going to run with it and learn from it. And I resonate so much with that mentality. Where can everyone find you if they don’t know you already?

 

00;42;29;17 – 00;42;32;13

Dr. Mona

I’m assuming they do. But where can everyone find you? I’m going to link it all to my show notes.

 

00;42;32;17 – 00;42;39;19

Susie Allison

Oh, fabulous! So you can find me on Instagram at Busy Toddler or on my website which is busy toddler.com.

 

00;42;39;21 – 00;43;02;17

Dr. Mona

Amazing. And again, it was just such a pleasure talking to you. Everyone has to follow a busy toddler. Again, she has amazing resources, her book as well. And just again, you need to follow even if you’re not in the phase like you have older children just to get her energy into your life. Like I am very vibey, and I said in the beginning that I think this is so important that you surround yourself on social and in real life with people who are uplifting.

 

00;43;02;17 – 00;43;08;08

Dr. Mona

And Susie is that person, sharing the ups and downs of parenthood. And I again, I really appreciate you for all that you do.

 

00;43;08;09 – 00;43;10;08

Susie Allison

Thank you. Oh, thank you so much for having me.

 

00;43;10;08 – 00;43;12;12

Dr. Mona

Thank you for tuning in for this week’s episode.

 

00;43;12;12 – 00;43;13;05

Dr. Mona

As always.

 

00;43;13;05 – 00;43;26;00

Dr. Mona

Please leave a review, share this episode with a friend, share it on your social media. Make sure to follow me at PedsDocTalk on Instagram and subscribe to my YouTube channel. PedsDocTalk TV. We’ll talk to you soon.