The Tickle Monster Needs To Lie Down NowWhy don't parents like to play with their kids?

Remarks from the Fray:

I was an only child who spent toddler to kindergarten age being cared for by my grandfather. He was elderly, and while intensively loving, he did not "play" with me. Nor did my mother or father when they came home from work. The time they spent with me, we spent it doing adult type things. For play, I was on my own, or I had to go hang out with my cousins. If ever I would have gone up to my mom and said, "I'm bored...play with me...." she would have said, "Bored? I can find something for you to do," and made me clean the bathroom. A little bit of that made sure I spent my time outside playing on my own.

I don't think any of that was a bad thing. More than anything, it taught me to be very self-sufficient, and taught me how to entertain myself. I can entertain myself endlessly now as an adult, and I don't need other people in order to do so. Nor do I feel cheated out of a childhood or loving parents. My parents loved me, and in their adult-like interactions with me taught me how to be an adult. How to be a kid...I already knew.

--architeque

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I played with my kids whenever they invited me to, with very rare exceptions. Same with my nieces and nephews and now my grandnieces and nephews. I enjoy the hell out of it. Part of it, I'm sure, is the sure and certain knowledge that they will grow up all too fast and won't want to play with the old fart any more, but a much bigger part is the way little ones open my eyes to absolutely amazing things I had forgotten all about.

Being dragged by the hand into the back garden to "lookit this!!!" is only annoying until you actually do look and realize that while you may have seen butterflies a million times, you haven't really seen them in half a century. They are amazing and beautiful creatures. So are kittens pouncing each other. So are most of the things young children try to bring to our attention.

Having a pack of howling ankle biters climb all over you and try to wrestle you to the ground is only annoying until you consider the absolute and unconditional trust they are displaying by tackling someone so much larger than they are. They know you could hurt them, and hurt them very badly if you were so inclined - or even if you were simply careless. But they believe without reservation that you never would. How many adults would trust anyone so much?

When they grow exhausted from all the horseplay and climb, yawning, into your lap, hug you and tell you they love you, they love you with an unconditional absoluteness and purity that no adult could possibly feel - except toward a child. The calluses we develop over the years (and that they inevitably will too) in response to the vicissitudes of life are still years in their future, and for a brief moment, they can slip right by your own calluses, through all of your emotional defenses and, for a brief moment in time, grant you the gift of feeling that same, innocent, unadulterated love again yourself...

I wouldn't give up these gifts they give me for anything in this world... and I feel truly sorry for those parents (and uncles, aunts and grandparents) out there who do. I seriously doubt they know what they're losing...

--Graylodge

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I seldom see parents or adults play with children at gatherings. A lot of lip service is given about how people love children, but really it is mostly their own children they are talking about unfortunately.

I was mostly ignored by my aunts and uncles except once when a very religious aunt and uncle in Ohio lured me to their childless home on the pretext of getting to know me better and to promise me some of their crystal. So when I am with extended family I yearn for my brothers and their wives to pay attention to my children. I don't know where this desire comes from- I guess you just want them to see how wonderful your children are.

I love children and often play with them at gatherings because I find adults too "scripted" as the article states. Kids are just more fun and spontaneous and unjudgmental of course.

--Redhead in Dixie

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It's important to get down on the floor with them, see the world through their eyes, show them that you're interested in what interests them, blah blah blah--but do it for fifteen minutes, then say, "Ok, it's time for me to do Mom stuff; you guys go amuse yourselves."

Teaches them that A) other people's feelings matter too, even, GASP, Mom's, and B) they are expected to use their own brains to amuse themselves and not have an adult entertain/be involved with them every waking hour.

That we're even discussing this makes me wistful for the zeitgeist of my own childhood, when in the summertime kids roamed around the neighborhood and the woods from after breakfast until dinner, only coming home for lunch. These days parents are either working or whatnot, so that many kids are in highly structured daycare settings from infancy, or so paranoid about their kids' safety that they don't allow any unsupervised play and keep their kids shuttling from one organized activity to the next. The natural setting for many kids seems to be an adult constantly thinking up ways to entertain them, as opposed to giving them a reasonable amount of attention and then ushering them to 'go play.'

--guamania

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