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Comment by daxfohl | Hacker News Reader

> them playing with each other or doing something independent quietly (super important skills for them to learn IMO)

+100 for this. Our kids just don't. Maybe 5 min, and then "mom! dad!". And we drop everything and go relieve them of their duty to entertain themselves. I feel like this is a failing on our part as parents. And it makes everything worse for everyone.

I'm curious if you have any practical measures you've followed to get past this.

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Every time they do this, assign a bug to them.

Everyone will have different experiences with this, but I wonder how old your kids are? We didn't really experience a lot of the self-entertainment until our kids were 5 and 3 - at that point they began being able to cooperate and play well enough with each other that they could get engrossed (either in parallel or together) and allow us to focus primarily on non-kid-stuff.

6 and 3 now. And yeah it is getting better though we still have a way to go.

Not sure it's the right thing(tm) to do but I generally make it "worse" for both of them if they ask me to solve their fights. E.g. if they fight and shout "Mom! Dad!" I'll tell them "Great that you're not playing any more, here are some chores that need doing".

All kids are different. Within a reason, there is no "failing" as each combination is unique and there is no way to compare or run A/B test to say that one particular way is "failure" and one is "success"

IME, once they learn to read (and assuming you can instill or kindle [pun not consciously intended, but left] a love of reading), that problem will more than solve itself.

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