I’ve been thinking a lot about “play” lately and how much I do, or don’t, engage in it with my son. Reading, The Last Child In The Woods and Playful Parenting has me worrying about the last time T and I made a fort together or had a picnic in the Ponderosa’s semi-mangy, large enough for a small Civil War re-enactment backyard. Like any mommy, I’m caught up in mealtimes and Target and Trader Joe’s runs and vacuuming up dog hair twice a day and doing laundry before it becomes Everest-ish, so that rather than getting down and dirty with T in a mud puddle, I’ll let him get down and dirty while I glance at him through the windows as I cook veggie hot dogs or Google healthy waffle recipes for kids.
Oh, PB. Really? Listen: Step away from the Google. Leave Target for another day. Take the pot off the burner—your son is not going to starve if he doesn’t eat dinner right at six. Go outside and pick up that monster truck and take it over to him and make it make friends with his autos and dinos and giraffes and get some play-action going, Mama. He needs it. You need it. He’ll remember it.
He’s your only child and, to be quite frank, these days won’t be coming back, PB.
I think you’d better go for it.