Many of us have plans before we have children that they will just have a couple of carefully selected playthings, kept neatly on a shelf or in a box – or even in a playroom.
But you might be starting to realise ….
Their play needs time to grow
Sometimes your toddler needs to come back to something they’ve been playing with over time. They have an idea and have spent ages building a house, train track, farm, or whatever and if you put it away, they lose all that thinking and have to start again.
Brains learn by doing
Exploring your ideas when you’re little involves moving things, getting things out, looking at things and combining things in different ways; this is all great thinking, but not always tidy!
We can start to view mess differently
Maybe, accepting that there might be things out, but seeing that as productive helps – your house might not be Instagrammable – but your toddler is learning.
Everyone has their own threshold for comfortable chaos
At the end of some days you just want to sit down and watch TV, and a tidy house doesn’t feel quite as important as having a bit of a rest. You might find you can’t relax until everything is tidy – which might shift your priorities!
If you can, find a place where you are happy for there to be some productive mess – this might be a corner of a room, or somewhere that you don’t need to look at or tidy every day!