I live with my boyfriend and his 6 year old daughter (5, but 6 in a few weeks) and she expects me to play with her 100% of the time and I'm beginning to really burn out and I'm not sure what to do.As soon as she sees me, I hear “Jess let’s play… (game)” and then the game has already begun. Sometimes she just jumps right into a make believe character (i.e “hellooo I’m your grandmother”) and I have no choice because the game is happening already.The details:My boyfriend is divorced and has partial custody of his daughter, who is turning 6 in a month. She is here for two weeks at a time during the summer, and then 3 weekdays from 4-8 and every other weekend during the school year.I’ve been dating my boyfriend for 2 years but we waited until 5 months ago to introduce her to me. It went awesomely, she loved me, everything was smooth, and now I live with him/them. I love them both and I think she’s a freaking awesome kid. She’s smart, funny, and I love to spend time with her.When I was first getting to know her, I was definitely nervous about making her like me, so I was trying my best to be fun and entertaining and likable. I played with her constantly. Make believe games, drawing games, barbie games, etc. I think that maybe by doing this, she began to see me as a playmate. Someone who she can count on for entertainment. She started telling me “Jess, you’re my best friend.” After a month or so I began to really start to burn out. I wasn’t spending much (if any) time to myself because this kid wanted me to entertain her 24/7. In the beginning, my boyfriend was spending a decent amount of time playing with us too, but I’ve noticed that especially in the last month, he really isn’t playing with her much. He does his duties (cooks for her, cleans, gets her ready for bed, reads her a bedtime story, goes to the park with her, watches movies with her, etc) but he doesn’t indulge her “make believe” games much anymore. So then I’m stuck with the playing duty. It’s also because my boyfriend will spend an hour cleaning up the kitchen after a meal and during this time his daughter expects me to play games with her.One of the problems, I think, is that her “games” are only fun for her and require a ton of energy on my part. She doesn’t want to play cards or race or do anything where there is turn taking. She wants games that are 100% focused on giving her attention. Here are some of the games she wants to play to give you an idea:“interview me” game where I sit there for an hour and ask her questions like “do you prefer apples or bananas? cats or dogs? summer or winter?“summer school” game where I’m her summer school teacher and I have to give her different challenges to complete like ‘go to art class and draw me a flower’ or ‘go to cooking class and make me spaghetti’ etc.‘spy challenge’ game where she’s a spy and I have to send her on different missions throughout the house“I’m your grandma” game where she pretends to be my grandma and I have to play along and ask her to bake me cookies and things like thatWhen we go to the park, she can’t just play on the playground, me and her dad have to give her “challenges” and “spy missions” like “okay first go up the net, then down the slide, then run through the tube, then jump on all of the red colored dots, and then come back for your next mission”I think you get the idea - she wants someone to entertain her all of the time. It’s to the point where we finish eating lunch, and immediately after I put my fork down, I hear “ok Jess let’s pretend that this frisbee is your mom calling you and you have to talk to her” or “ok Jess let’s play I’m a ballerina and you’re my coach and you have to tell me different moves to do” or I have to do a bit of work on my laptop (I work from home) and as soon as I close my laptop, the first thing I hear is “Jess! I am your grandmother! Do you want some cookies?” I can’t simply go sit in the living room without being forced to entertain her.This extends to other areas of our life too. She seems to need constant attention all of the time. If my boyfriend wants to lie down for a few minutes, she inevitably runs in and ‘needs’ something but usually it’s just “can I have chocolate? Can I have licorice? Dad you need to come see this part of the show I’m watching! Look what I can do with my yoyo! Look how far I can jump!” etc. She can’t be on her own, ever.Another really good example of this is today:My boyfriend and I took her to an art museum close to home (3 minute walk). We went there at 1 PM and it was going to close at 2 PM. So we were planning on just spending like 40 minutes there. This was a semi interactive museum so while it’s maybe not an (almost) 6 year old’s favorite thing to do, it wasn’t a huge deal to bear with it for a half hour and there were things for her to touch and see. Less than 10 minutes in, she started complaining that she was bored. After about 15 minutes of whining, my boyfriend told her “okay but we’ve been doing what you want to do all week, we watched spongebob, went to the park, got ice cream… sometimes you need to do what we want to do. I understand that you’re bored but you need to be quiet.” She kept whining on and on and saying she was tired until my boyfriend picked her up and carried her around (a nearly 6 year old) on his shoulders but she STILL was complaining and whining and we couldn’t even enjoy the exhibit because she kept moaning out of boredom every few seconds.She has tons of games at home that she can do on her own: multiple drawing pads, colored pencils, markers, barbies, barbie house, barbie caravan, dolls, books, DVDs, yoyo, hula hoop, markers to draw on the kitchen walls, bubbles, etc.I could go on and on about this but I think you get the point. I don’t have experience with kids prior to this and I really don’t know what is normal and what isn’t. Is this normal kid behavior? What is the correct way to deal with it? How can I tell her that I don’t want to play all the time?How much time do/did you spend actively playing with your kid? Would it be reasonable to carve out an hour a day actively playing with her with 100% of my/our attention focused on her and then beyond that she needs to find activities to do alone? via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2bFQjpn
