How do I motivate my 10-year-old daughter to pursue individual interests in the afternoon? She is not allowed to have screen time, and we have created a list of activity ideas she could pursue that is up on her wall, but she won’t do any of them. She will literally just sit there staring at the ceiling half the time. She will bug me nonstop to have a friend over or maybe read. That’s it. The only way to get to do anything remotely productive is to force her to do a certain task for a certain amount of time, which seems to entirely miss the point of self-directed activity. I’m not really looking for activity ideas, I have given her plenty. The only thing she wants to do is play with friends. I work full-time so I need her to find motivation to do a self-directed activity – I can’t hold her hand through it every day. Help!
