Practical, research-backed ways to keep your toddler happily absorbed during feeds and settling sessions, without a screen in sight.
The short answer, for those reading one-handed at 3 a.m.: keep a small basket of rotating, open-ended activities within your toddler's reach before you sit down to feed, and you will buy yourself ten to twenty minutes of genuine absorption far more reliably than any single toy ever could. Rotate the contents every few days so novelty does the heavy lifting, choose materials that reward exploration rather than instruction, and your older child will begin to understand that feed-time has its own rhythm, one that includes them even when you cannot physically be beside them.
That is the practical core of everything that follows. The thirty ideas below, the room-setup advice, and the notes on rhythm and ritual all orbit that single truth: predictability plus novelty is a surprisingly powerful combination for children between two and six, and it costs almost nothing to arrange once you know what you are looking for.
Feeding a newborn can occupy anywhere from four to eight hours of a twenty-four-hour day in the early weeks. That is a long time to ask a two- or three-year-old to manage without your full attention, and it is entirely reasonable to find it gruelling. The guilt that accompanies that feeling, the sense that you are somehow failing your older child by being occupied, is one of the most common things new parents of two describe. It deserves to be named plainly, and then set aside, because the evidence does not support it.
Children are not damaged by periods of low-intensity parental attention during infancy. What shapes their development is the overall texture of the relationship: the conversation, the play, the warmth returned to when the feed is done. This season is finite. Most families move through the most acute phase within twelve to sixteen weeks, and the strategies built during that window tend to outlast it, leaving older children with a genuine capacity for self-directed play that serves them for years.
Independent play is not a consolation prize for children whose parents are occupied. Researchers including Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff have documented extensively that self-directed, exploratory play builds precisely the executive-function skills, sustained attention, flexible thinking, and self-regulation, that formal instruction struggles to teach. Adele Diamond's work on executive function in young children shows that these capacities are trainable, and that the training happens largely through play rather than through direct instruction.
What the evidence tells us
Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff's research consistently finds that open-ended, child-led play strengthens the neural pathways underlying attention and flexible problem-solving in the under-6s. Brief, repeated periods of independent play, far from being a gap in provision, are among the most reliable ways to build these capacities.
Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development is also useful here. Your toddler does not need you to be physically present for every moment of play. What matters is that the materials and environment are pitched just above their current comfort level: interesting enough to pull them forward, manageable enough not to frustrate. That calibration, rather than your proximity, is the key variable.
A yes space is simply an area of the room where everything within reach is safe, permitted, and genuinely interesting. The name reflects the idea that you want to be able to say yes to almost anything your toddler reaches for, removing the need to police the environment from across the room. Before a feed begins, move anything fragile or off-limits out of reach, bring the activity basket to a low surface your child can access independently, and make sure any mess that results is one you can live with.
Rotation matters enormously. Dauch and colleagues found that toddlers given fewer toys at a time engaged in longer, more sophisticated play with each one than children given access to a large number simultaneously. A basket of four or five well-chosen items, swapped out every two to three days, will serve you better than a room full of toys left unchanged for weeks.
The rotation principle
Research by Carly Dauch found that toddlers with access to fewer toys at one time played more creatively and for longer with each toy. Limiting the feed-time basket to four or five items, and changing them regularly, tends to produce noticeably better engagement than leaving the full toy collection accessible.
The qualities that make a toy useful during a feed are the same qualities developmental researchers have long associated with rich play: open-endedness, tactile interest, and the capacity to be used in more than one way. Wooden puzzles reward concentration without requiring adult involvement to be satisfying. Traditional games built around turns and simple rules can be played across a two- or three-year age gap without frustration.
Jaques of London, established in 1795 and the world's oldest games company, has built its range around exactly these principles. A well-made wooden puzzle keeps a four-year-old absorbed through an entire feed. A set of skittles or a peg-and-ball game gives a younger child something physically satisfying to return to again and again.
Browse Jaques educational toys for under-6s Explore the Jaques puzzle collectionPredictability is deeply calming for young children. Berk's work on self-regulation shows that children manage transitions far better when they can anticipate what comes next. A simple ritual, the same three or four steps before every feed, can transform the moment from a rupture into a known sequence. You might say: "I am going to feed the baby now. Here is your special basket. When I am done, we will read together." The words matter less than the consistency.
Over days and weeks, your toddler begins to internalise the pattern. The basket becomes a cue rather than a consolation. Feed-time becomes, gradually, their time too: a pocket of the day with its own satisfactions.
Some days the basket will be ignored, the jigsaw will be thrown, and your toddler will cry at your knee for the entirety of a forty-minute cluster feed. This is normal, and it does not mean the approach has failed. Regression under stress is developmentally expected, particularly in the early weeks of a sibling's life. On those days, lower the bar entirely: an audiobook, a simple song you can sing together while feeding, or permission to sit quietly beside you and watch the baby are all valid. The goal on difficult days is connection, not independence.
Sandseter and Brussoni's research on risk and resilience in play reminds us that children need to experience manageable difficulty, including the small frustration of a parent being occupied, in order to develop coping capacity. That is not a reason to dismiss your toddler's distress. It is a reason not to catastrophise it. Comfort them, return to the routine the next day, and trust the process.
A note on the difficult days
Sandseter and Brussoni's research on children's resilience through play suggests that experiencing manageable frustration, including moments when a parent is genuinely unavailable, contributes to the development of emotional coping skills over time. The difficult days are part of the process, not evidence that it is not working.
Neither. Two minutes of independent play is entirely typical for a child just turning two, and it is the baseline from which you build. Independent play, like any skill, develops through practice and through the gradual withdrawal of scaffolding. Begin by sitting nearby, even while feeding, and narrating warmly what you can see her doing. Over days and weeks, most children extend their window of absorption naturally, particularly when the materials are well-matched to their current interests. If she is still managing fewer than five minutes by age three, mention it to your health visitor, but in the vast majority of cases this is simply a matter of time and repetition.
For children aged three and above, wooden puzzles with large, chunky pieces and well-made traditional games without small parts are generally well suited to unsupervised play within a yes space. For two-year-olds, the key check is piece size: any component small enough to pass through a toilet-roll tube is worth keeping out of reach. Reputable wooden toy makers size their pieces with this developmental stage in mind. Always check the age guidance on the specific product, and do a quick scan of the play area before you sit down.
The most effective single thing you can do is give your three-year-old a role rather than a task. Instead of simply occupying them while you feed, invite them into the moment: they could be the one who fetches the muslin, chooses which song you hum, or watches the baby's face and tells you what they see. Suskind's research on early language and connection shows that children thrive on being spoken to as competent participants rather than managed as problems. The feed-time basket is for when they want to play. The invitation to participate is for when they want to be close.
It is not just something people say. The research on this point is genuinely robust. Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, and Adele Diamond's separate bodies of work all converge on the finding that self-directed play, including the low-key, slightly repetitive kind a toddler does alone with a puzzle or a set of blocks, builds the attentional and regulatory capacities that underpin school readiness and beyond. The effect is cumulative rather than immediate, which is why it can feel invisible in the moment, but the evidence that it matters is solid and consistent. You are not consoling yourself. You are investing in something real.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.