The phone at 2. The phone at 15.
15 waiting games for the restaurant, the car and the doctor's waiting room, sorted by age. Plus a 7-day tracker for a phone-free table.
Pick your child's age. Try one at the next wait.
No kit needed. Everything here is already on the table or in your bag.
- Menu peekaboo. Hide your face behind the menu card. "Where's Appa?" Then let them hide.
- Spoon drum. Tap a soft rhythm on the table with a spoon. They copy. Then you copy them.
- Point and name. "Where's the fan? Where's the light? Where's the big plant?" Let them point.
- Hide the spoon. Put a spoon under the napkin. Lift it slowly. Their turn to hide it.
- Cup stacking. Two paper cups or steel katoris from the bag: stack, knock, stack again.
- I spy colours. "I spy something red." Keep it to things they can see from the chair.
- Napkin boat. Fold a paper napkin into a boat or a fan. Let them sail it to the salt.
- Counting hunt. Count the fans, then the lights, then the people in blue.
- Sachet sorting. Sort the sugar and salt sachets by colour into two rows.
- Copy my face. Make a happy, sleepy or surprised face. They copy, then you guess theirs.
- Day backwards. Tell today from dinner back to breakfast. Who remembers more?
- Smell and guess. When a dish passes by, guess what it is from the smell alone.
- One-line monster. Draw on a napkin, one line each, until it becomes a monster.
- Guess my animal. "I'm thinking of an animal." They ask yes-or-no questions.
- Story chain. Each person adds one sentence to a story. Silly is allowed.
Waiting is a skill, like walking. A child learns it the same way: small tries, with someone beside them. Every phone we hand over skips one try.
They copy the table, not the rule.
Researchers quietly watched families eating at fast-food restaurants. Most of the grown-ups were on their phones during the meal. It is not about blame. It is about what children see us do while we wait.
Radesky et al., Pediatrics, 2014 · one observational study, 55 caregivers
Go deeper: how they watched
Researchers sat in fast-food restaurants and wrote detailed notes on 55 caregivers eating with young children. 40 used a phone or other device during the meal. The strongest pattern was absorption: the more the adult looked at the screen, the less they responded to the child, and some children tried harder to get attention. It is one observational study in one country, so read it as a clear picture, not a rule for every family.
The reflex we build at 2 is the table we sit at when they are 15. The good news: it works the other way too.
I am Manjunath. I built a maze for my daughter, and these guides are what I learnt on the way.
She knew Ganesha before she knew ABCs.
Calm isn't taught with words. It is built in the small waits.
Read my story →Tap each one.
Car rides count too. Sing the song of every truck you pass, spot the colours of the cars, or count the bridges. The window is the oldest screen we have.
The food will take 20 minutes. Your 2-year-old starts to fuss. Best first move?
A game, with you in it. Fussing is often boredom with nowhere to go. A game gives the waiting a job, and you give it company. If it doesn't work, a short walk to look at the kitchen or the fish tank is the next best move.
The wait bag: 5 small things.
0 of 5: Start with a notebook and one crayon.
The phone-free table. One meal a day.
Tick each day you had one meal with every phone in the bag, yours too. It saves on this phone.
0 of 7: Pick one meal today.
At the next family function, let them sit with Ajji or Nani with an empty hand. That is how the stories get passed on.
Krishna's Farm Friends
A birch wood maze where your child guides each farm friend home with a magnetic pen. It does nothing on its own, so their hands and head do the work. No batteries, no sound. For 15 months and up.
Sources (2)
- Radesky JS, Kistin CJ, Zuckerman B, et al. Patterns of mobile device use by caregivers and children during meals in fast food restaurants. Pediatrics 133(4):e843, 2014.
- World Health Organization. Guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under 5 years of age, 2019.
Let's build childhoods worth cherishing.