- submitted by Sally Owen on 04/08/2008
I'd Do Anything for My Children, Just Don't Make Me Play With Them!
By Sally Owen
I hate to play with my children.
In my 14 ½ years as a mother, I've tried innumerable times to enjoy my kids' games. But I've never managed anything more than grudging determination.
Just to be clear: I love being with my children. I love talking with them, reading to them, eating with them. I'll go to the park or on a hike or to a museum. I will happily undertake a cooking or craft project with them.
But sitting on the floor with a Power Ranger and a small child is my idea of hell.
First of all, it's uncomfortable. They can lie on their tummies all day, kicking their little legs and acting out dramas of their own making. My back starts to hurt before I've even reached the hardwood. And, although they are oblivious to the dust bunnies rolling around like tumbleweeds, I am not.
But physical discomfort is just part of the issue. The real problem is that kids' games have a secret architecture only they understand. A child my son has never laid eyes on before can plop down amid the Legos, beanie babies and action figures he has been working on for three hours, and immediately the two of them are jabbering away happily and building a new wing on the castle.
If I give in to my son's pleading and join in, things grind to a halt.
"Okay," I say. "My guy is going to fly over and save the yellow Power Ranger from the river."
"No, Mom," he says. "He's a bad guy. He's on top of the wall because he's about to spray poison gas on these guys, and you have to make him say, ‘Ha ha! I'm going to get you!'"
"Ha ha. I'm going to get you," I repeat dutifully.
"No, Mom. In a scary voice. Like, ‘Ha ha! I'm going to get you!'"
"Ha ha. I'm going to get you," I say, scarily.
"No, not like that, Mom. Here, see, he goes down and he falls in the hot lava and..."
"Hot lava? I thought it was a river."
"Mom, it's a river of hot lava," he says. He speaks to me as if I am a simpleton. But he is too young for sarcasm; he is truly trying to be patient. "And you make your guy..."
"Why can't I say what he does? He's my guy," I say.
"Because he has to fall in the hot lava! It's in the game," he says.
Soon I find myself down on his level. But not in a good way.
"No fair! If you don't let me decide what my guy does, I'm not going to play!" I say, struggling to my feet.
Board games are even worse. They seem so wholesome. So every once in a while we succumb to the myth of Family Game Night (invented, I believe, by the Milton Bradley Co.) I imagine us laughing as we collect the rent on Boardwalk or pass Go. I do have friends who while away many happy hours playing Scrabble or Monopoly. Not us.
Part of the problem is that one of my children (who shall remain nameless, but let's just say she's my daughter) has a long history as a terrible sport.
For years, every attempt to play a board game ended with tokens, money and the board itself flying through the air as someone (again, for argument's sake, let's say it's my daughter) stormed out of the room.
And parents, is there any worse feeling in the world than getting within a few squares of the end of Candy Land and drawing the card for Plumpy? (The Wikipedia entry on Candy Land addresses this issue, warning, "The classic game takes longer to complete than one might expect, because the location cards can send players backwards." It takes even longer when Mommy has to go pour herself a drink before she can bring herself to replay the entire stupid game.)
For a long time, I felt guilty about this. I'm sure I read that somebody did a study that found a direct link between children whose mothers played with them and higher SAT scores.
Not to mention the tug on your heartstrings when you come home from a long workday and they look into your eyes and say, "Mommy, come play with me."
The first person to let me off the hook was one of my son's preschool teachers. When I asked her for advice about this problem, she said, "That's not your job. We don't play with the kids. They play with each other."
I thought, you know, she's right. I'm not his playmate. I'm his mother. I'm an adult, by God, and if I don't want to make a stuffed kitty talk in a squeaky voice, then I don't have to!
I was gratified to see a story in The Boston Globe that said researchers "have found that parents routinely claim that playing with their kids is among their favorite activities, but when you ask them to record their state of mind, hour by hour, they rate time spent with their children as being about as much fun as housework."
Ha! Even more telling: Americans are virtually the only people on Earth who'd even think of playing with their children. In most cultures, adults think it's silly.
See? I'm not selfish. I'm sophisticated.
Sally Owen, who lives in North Carolina, holds down a fulltime job and also manages a household that, at present, includes one husband, one teenage daughter, one preteen son, three rats, four fish, one dog and a blind leopard gecko....read more rants
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