I’m not a mom who is good at playing pretend. Things I’m happy to do: puzzles, board games, coloring, reading – I’m all in. But ask me to one-side a conversation with a teddy bear, de-escalate a tense situation between construction vehicles, or offer a baby doll soliloquy and I have reached the end of my creative rope.
Even with almost 8 years of parenting experience so far – unstructured play time is still my least favorite. Fred Rogers said,
“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”
I know play is important and I want my kids to have big imaginations – so what’s a tired lady to do? I have found, and I’m not sure how (Stroke of genius? Divine intervention? Pure dumb luck?!) a few everyday situations where I offer my crew a little imagination play, and in return everyone wins.
Train Time! Getting school or day-care aged kids out the door and where they need to be when they need to be there is a tedious task. One especially wild morning I told my kids the train was about to leave the station and they needed to make sure they had their tickets at the ready. Yelling “All Aboard!” somehow got all my people in the car quickly and without too much bickering. I made sure to take everyone’s “ticket” before heading out the driveway and asked if they paid extra for a window seat. How about that playtime out the door routine?
Hotel Treatment Play. We don’t travel much and my kids have stayed in a hotel only once in their lives, so to them the idea of a hotel is very, very cool. Mostly the idea here is to speak in a soft voice and make every part of your usual bedtime routine an accommodation. “A complimentary story time is being offered in the main lobby if you’d like to join.”
“A lights-out service is offered at 7:45pm” (or the usual bedtime).
You can even remind them that a continental (or self-service for older kids) breakfast is available in the morning.
Sunscreen Facepaint. Applying sunscreen to wiggly kids may be my least favorite part of summer. But we are a very fair skinned people and if I don’t get some SPF 70 on my kids, I’ll be parenting some very sad, very red tomatoes in about an hour. When it’s time to slather up their faces, I ask what they want for their ‘face paint’. Tigers and butterflies are very popular. I give them some details on what I’m doing, but mostly I’m getting sunscreen on all the places as quickly as I can while they’re still before they play.
Those are all the tricks in my bag y’all. I’d love to hear how you use the magic of play into your everyday routines!
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