I have five children (now aged 31-43 years old). I also grew up with six brothers and one younger sister. Since I am the second oldest, I was often in charge of the younger kids, so I knew how to look after children from a young age.
I NEVER played Barbies or dolls with my girls, as I was a tomboy anyway and never liked dolls, even as a child. I only played with them with things I enjoyed. I helped them build things out of Legos (helped, not took over), I helped them build large, complicated tracks with Brio trains. I threw balls back and forth. I'd play hockey in the yard with a grandson and had a blast (he was two and had quite a swing). I'd play board games - but refused games like Candyland, because I hated it. I also won't play Monopoly, because I don't like it, either.
I ONLY play games I enjoy, and I don't let the kids win, either (okay, sometimes I'd be a little soft, or 'didn't see' when I could take advantage but only when they're little).
The same goes for reading to kids - I won't read books I hate, I need to be able to enjoy it as well.
I never felt obligated to play with the children. I am 70 now, and I still don't. I will play with them if I want to, and I certainly don't let myself be bossed around! And the grandchildren love me, because they KNOW I love being around them, and they think I am great fun. It amuses them that I am competitive, so they try their hardest to beat me. Which helps them strategize better, and when they win they know that it was a well deserved victory.
"I hate playing with my kids. And if you’re wondering what I’m thinking in those torturous moments, here’s what’s usually playing through my mind: What am I supposed to do here exactly? What do they want from me? How can I participate in this bizarre storyline? This doesn’t even make any sense! God, I’m bored. When will it end? How can I make myself useful in a different way without disappointing my child?”
Its amusing (to me anyway) that if one makes some simple substitutions, one can arrive at:
" I hate being in class. And if you're wondering what I'm thinking in those tortuous moments, here's what's usually playing through my mind: What am I supposed to do here exactly? What do they want from me? How can I participate in this bizarre situation? This doesn't even make any sense! God, I'm bored. When will it end? How can I do something useful here without disappointing my teacher?"
Suggests some interesting possibilities. Can the parent be said to be "acting out" their school experience? If they are focused on whether they are playing right, do they even have the concept of what it means to play anymore?
Timothy Gallwey wrote a book about teaching adults how to play tennis , called "The Inner Game of Tennis". And it was literally about getting people to rediscover how to play, to let their bodies learn in the way it naturally knows how, by simply immersing oneself in the experience, focusing on actually experiencing and enjoying it, letting go of outcomes and trying to control the results, especially letting go of trying to consciously control the movements of ones body. In baseball sometimes a pitcher will have trouble finding the strike zone, and will be tempted to do something disastrous, called "aiming the ball". This means trying to throw a strike by consciously controlling ones movements. But the conscious mind isn't the one that knows how to throw a good hard fastball with lots of lively movement on it; what it throws instead is a " batting practice fastball", right down the middle of the plate, that gets promptly swatted over the fence.
As soon as you start thinking about playing in terms of outcomes, you're at risk of no longer being engaged in play at all, but doing something else, a kind of fake playing that isn't pretend playing, but something more akin to manipulation. And even in the case of trying to manipulate oneself, it generally doesn't produce good outcomes.
(There is indeed more to learning tennis, and to playing baseball, related to what has been called "deliberate practice". But it has to be built upon a foundation of patterned experience that is best acquired through play.)
The best I've been able to manage is having 4 kids, so they can play with each other. Take them to the parks as often as we can. I'd need help affording a Sudbury School even if we had a local one. But with our kids just straight up not going to school, they do quite well just with each other.
"The second reason why parents feel they should play with their kids is that they are regularly being told that they should, by psychologists and other “experts.”
There is a paradox involved here in how to respond to such a parent - shall we counter with contradictory evidence from other experts, seek to encourage the scientific community to get their story straight? Then presumably these parents could just relax, because after all that's what the experts are saying to do.
Surely the more basic problem though is that these parents lack common sense and don't trust themselves. Maybe we can understand that as the outcome itself of coercive parenting and coercive schooling ... but if so, what can be done about it? Here no universal prescription is possible, for everyone must be related to in their own way; but if I were engaged in conversation with such a parent myself, the place I would want to begin with is simply: What do you want ? Do you want to be able to enjoy playing with your child (perhaps you could recover some of your own playfulness), or do you want to not have to play with them and be able to just not worry about it? In which case I again would not be inclined to cite scientific evidence that will ressure them (the appeal to authority again), but rather to reminisce: did you as a child feel that you suffered from not having adults who were willing to play with you ? Did you feel neglected? Did you perhaps feel "not seen"? Perhaps they would discover what they were really missing is not having an adult who played with them, but rather having an adult that respected them, valued them as individuals, rather than " taking pride" in them. Or from them.
I think you have put your finger on the problem. People are growing up and becoming parents without common sense about kids, how they grow, how to be with them, etc. Throughout most of history pretty much everyone grew up surrounded by kids of all ages. Even as children they helped care for younger kids. They saw first hand how children learn and grow and therefore they trusted the process. Now, for many new parents, their own first child is their first opportunity to observe a baby. Also many lack a network of other parents, including grandparents, who are helping out and bringing their experience to bear. So, what happens is that parents (especially moms because they feel most responsible) turn to books and websites to learn from the "experts." They don't trust themselves and don't trust the developmental process. Another, related problem, is that many more young parents today are college educated professionals than was true in the past. What you learn with all that education and a "professional" attitude is not to trust folk wisdom or your own intuitions, but to look to books and science for the answers. I'm a great believer in science, but much of what is passed off as science in this realm is actually prejudice with a phrase such as "research shows" in front of it, with no actual research cited, or if there is a citation it doesn't really support the claim.
I'm a play therapist, and play with kids in child-led play on the daily. I LOVE playing with kids! I also agree with you, Peter, and am a MASSIVE fan of SDE and donate monthly to ASDE. There's a big difference between "playing with your kids" and "therapeutic play" in which I'm utilizing the process to help the child become aware of dysregulation, and emotional regulation and to integrate previously unintegrated events and emotions into his/her/their nervous system.
There's so many facets of how I want to respond from the perspective of a therapist. Depending on background of a parent, the inability, boredom and feelings that come up when faced with playing with a child COULD BE bringing up old stuff from childhood too - because playing is about being PRESENT and being present to yourself, your child, and the moment is also being present to whatever you may have been avoiding in your own emotional body and nervous system. Play brings stuff up, and can be healing.
It's also, as you say, not normal for adults to do! But if a kiddo doesn't have anyone else to play with, and wants to play, and you're it, how a parent responds to that child is IMPORTANT and can be harmful if not done carefully. Most of the time, in our current society, a parent will need to learn how to play - because we just don't have the other kids available handy to have the child go play with! So I do help and teach a parent how to do that. But also help them understand it isn't their fault or any lack of their that they don't like it initially - however learning to let go, find the silly, find ways to be joyful with your child can be so great.
Neurodivergent children don't always enjoy playing with other children, or vice versa, and may just want to infodump on their parents for fun, and may be late bloomers finding their peers too - some kids may have very sensitive nervous systems and thus have a much harder time playing with a group of NT kids without distress, so hanging with adults who are more predictable is safer. Just another thought.
Bottom line, we can't just focus on how it SHOULD be for kids, because there is diversity, and how it IS prevents that. So we work with what IS, and work towards what SHOULD be.
I still recall the joy of finding out that my 50+yo aunt (who was attending a large extended family gathering) was happy to get down and play Twister with myself and some cousins, rather than stand and chat with the adults. It was hilarious, such fun. Up til that point, I had had no idea that adults (apart from my parents) were even capable of play! No, I wouldn't have wanted her as a permanent playmate but as a one off...magic!
I started off afraid to play with my kid or be led by her in play. But my husband took to it all so easily that it tapped into my memories of playing with adults when I was a kid. I was the only child in a few years in my large family. There was one girl my age in my neighborhood (it was a pretty dense neighborhood by all accounts). My closest cousin was two years older. While I played a lot with kids,... I also played a lot with adults until I went to kindergarten. I had so many adults and older teens in my family and neighborhood, so no one had to spend too much time playing with me. It was an ever-rotating cast of grownups playing with me.
I channel some of that energy playing with my kid. My philosophy, which comes from my husband, is "figure out what the child wants to do, and help them do it". So all the motivation comes from my kid, and I just enhance the mischief. Yesterday I helped my kid tow her toy car filled with stuffed animals with her toy bike. She's no good with knots of course, so I had to fashion a tow rope from yarn and bind it. It was a blast.
I do this with other kids in the park and neighborhood too and the other moms look at me like I'm some kind of toddler whisperer. Any time I visit any friend with kids, with or without my kid in tow, all their kids ask for me. Now I've never been good with kids prior to having my own, so I think the magic is all in "figuring out kids what and helping them do it".
I have five children (now aged 31-43 years old). I also grew up with six brothers and one younger sister. Since I am the second oldest, I was often in charge of the younger kids, so I knew how to look after children from a young age.
I NEVER played Barbies or dolls with my girls, as I was a tomboy anyway and never liked dolls, even as a child. I only played with them with things I enjoyed. I helped them build things out of Legos (helped, not took over), I helped them build large, complicated tracks with Brio trains. I threw balls back and forth. I'd play hockey in the yard with a grandson and had a blast (he was two and had quite a swing). I'd play board games - but refused games like Candyland, because I hated it. I also won't play Monopoly, because I don't like it, either.
I ONLY play games I enjoy, and I don't let the kids win, either (okay, sometimes I'd be a little soft, or 'didn't see' when I could take advantage but only when they're little).
The same goes for reading to kids - I won't read books I hate, I need to be able to enjoy it as well.
I never felt obligated to play with the children. I am 70 now, and I still don't. I will play with them if I want to, and I certainly don't let myself be bossed around! And the grandchildren love me, because they KNOW I love being around them, and they think I am great fun. It amuses them that I am competitive, so they try their hardest to beat me. Which helps them strategize better, and when they win they know that it was a well deserved victory.
One the quotes you give from the parents is:
"I hate playing with my kids. And if you’re wondering what I’m thinking in those torturous moments, here’s what’s usually playing through my mind: What am I supposed to do here exactly? What do they want from me? How can I participate in this bizarre storyline? This doesn’t even make any sense! God, I’m bored. When will it end? How can I make myself useful in a different way without disappointing my child?”
Its amusing (to me anyway) that if one makes some simple substitutions, one can arrive at:
" I hate being in class. And if you're wondering what I'm thinking in those tortuous moments, here's what's usually playing through my mind: What am I supposed to do here exactly? What do they want from me? How can I participate in this bizarre situation? This doesn't even make any sense! God, I'm bored. When will it end? How can I do something useful here without disappointing my teacher?"
Suggests some interesting possibilities. Can the parent be said to be "acting out" their school experience? If they are focused on whether they are playing right, do they even have the concept of what it means to play anymore?
Timothy Gallwey wrote a book about teaching adults how to play tennis , called "The Inner Game of Tennis". And it was literally about getting people to rediscover how to play, to let their bodies learn in the way it naturally knows how, by simply immersing oneself in the experience, focusing on actually experiencing and enjoying it, letting go of outcomes and trying to control the results, especially letting go of trying to consciously control the movements of ones body. In baseball sometimes a pitcher will have trouble finding the strike zone, and will be tempted to do something disastrous, called "aiming the ball". This means trying to throw a strike by consciously controlling ones movements. But the conscious mind isn't the one that knows how to throw a good hard fastball with lots of lively movement on it; what it throws instead is a " batting practice fastball", right down the middle of the plate, that gets promptly swatted over the fence.
As soon as you start thinking about playing in terms of outcomes, you're at risk of no longer being engaged in play at all, but doing something else, a kind of fake playing that isn't pretend playing, but something more akin to manipulation. And even in the case of trying to manipulate oneself, it generally doesn't produce good outcomes.
(There is indeed more to learning tennis, and to playing baseball, related to what has been called "deliberate practice". But it has to be built upon a foundation of patterned experience that is best acquired through play.)
The best I've been able to manage is having 4 kids, so they can play with each other. Take them to the parks as often as we can. I'd need help affording a Sudbury School even if we had a local one. But with our kids just straight up not going to school, they do quite well just with each other.
Quote:
"The second reason why parents feel they should play with their kids is that they are regularly being told that they should, by psychologists and other “experts.”
There is a paradox involved here in how to respond to such a parent - shall we counter with contradictory evidence from other experts, seek to encourage the scientific community to get their story straight? Then presumably these parents could just relax, because after all that's what the experts are saying to do.
Surely the more basic problem though is that these parents lack common sense and don't trust themselves. Maybe we can understand that as the outcome itself of coercive parenting and coercive schooling ... but if so, what can be done about it? Here no universal prescription is possible, for everyone must be related to in their own way; but if I were engaged in conversation with such a parent myself, the place I would want to begin with is simply: What do you want ? Do you want to be able to enjoy playing with your child (perhaps you could recover some of your own playfulness), or do you want to not have to play with them and be able to just not worry about it? In which case I again would not be inclined to cite scientific evidence that will ressure them (the appeal to authority again), but rather to reminisce: did you as a child feel that you suffered from not having adults who were willing to play with you ? Did you feel neglected? Did you perhaps feel "not seen"? Perhaps they would discover what they were really missing is not having an adult who played with them, but rather having an adult that respected them, valued them as individuals, rather than " taking pride" in them. Or from them.
I think you have put your finger on the problem. People are growing up and becoming parents without common sense about kids, how they grow, how to be with them, etc. Throughout most of history pretty much everyone grew up surrounded by kids of all ages. Even as children they helped care for younger kids. They saw first hand how children learn and grow and therefore they trusted the process. Now, for many new parents, their own first child is their first opportunity to observe a baby. Also many lack a network of other parents, including grandparents, who are helping out and bringing their experience to bear. So, what happens is that parents (especially moms because they feel most responsible) turn to books and websites to learn from the "experts." They don't trust themselves and don't trust the developmental process. Another, related problem, is that many more young parents today are college educated professionals than was true in the past. What you learn with all that education and a "professional" attitude is not to trust folk wisdom or your own intuitions, but to look to books and science for the answers. I'm a great believer in science, but much of what is passed off as science in this realm is actually prejudice with a phrase such as "research shows" in front of it, with no actual research cited, or if there is a citation it doesn't really support the claim.
I'm a play therapist, and play with kids in child-led play on the daily. I LOVE playing with kids! I also agree with you, Peter, and am a MASSIVE fan of SDE and donate monthly to ASDE. There's a big difference between "playing with your kids" and "therapeutic play" in which I'm utilizing the process to help the child become aware of dysregulation, and emotional regulation and to integrate previously unintegrated events and emotions into his/her/their nervous system.
There's so many facets of how I want to respond from the perspective of a therapist. Depending on background of a parent, the inability, boredom and feelings that come up when faced with playing with a child COULD BE bringing up old stuff from childhood too - because playing is about being PRESENT and being present to yourself, your child, and the moment is also being present to whatever you may have been avoiding in your own emotional body and nervous system. Play brings stuff up, and can be healing.
It's also, as you say, not normal for adults to do! But if a kiddo doesn't have anyone else to play with, and wants to play, and you're it, how a parent responds to that child is IMPORTANT and can be harmful if not done carefully. Most of the time, in our current society, a parent will need to learn how to play - because we just don't have the other kids available handy to have the child go play with! So I do help and teach a parent how to do that. But also help them understand it isn't their fault or any lack of their that they don't like it initially - however learning to let go, find the silly, find ways to be joyful with your child can be so great.
Neurodivergent children don't always enjoy playing with other children, or vice versa, and may just want to infodump on their parents for fun, and may be late bloomers finding their peers too - some kids may have very sensitive nervous systems and thus have a much harder time playing with a group of NT kids without distress, so hanging with adults who are more predictable is safer. Just another thought.
Bottom line, we can't just focus on how it SHOULD be for kids, because there is diversity, and how it IS prevents that. So we work with what IS, and work towards what SHOULD be.
I still recall the joy of finding out that my 50+yo aunt (who was attending a large extended family gathering) was happy to get down and play Twister with myself and some cousins, rather than stand and chat with the adults. It was hilarious, such fun. Up til that point, I had had no idea that adults (apart from my parents) were even capable of play! No, I wouldn't have wanted her as a permanent playmate but as a one off...magic!
I started off afraid to play with my kid or be led by her in play. But my husband took to it all so easily that it tapped into my memories of playing with adults when I was a kid. I was the only child in a few years in my large family. There was one girl my age in my neighborhood (it was a pretty dense neighborhood by all accounts). My closest cousin was two years older. While I played a lot with kids,... I also played a lot with adults until I went to kindergarten. I had so many adults and older teens in my family and neighborhood, so no one had to spend too much time playing with me. It was an ever-rotating cast of grownups playing with me.
I channel some of that energy playing with my kid. My philosophy, which comes from my husband, is "figure out what the child wants to do, and help them do it". So all the motivation comes from my kid, and I just enhance the mischief. Yesterday I helped my kid tow her toy car filled with stuffed animals with her toy bike. She's no good with knots of course, so I had to fashion a tow rope from yarn and bind it. It was a blast.
I do this with other kids in the park and neighborhood too and the other moms look at me like I'm some kind of toddler whisperer. Any time I visit any friend with kids, with or without my kid in tow, all their kids ask for me. Now I've never been good with kids prior to having my own, so I think the magic is all in "figuring out kids what and helping them do it".