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

By Emily Bazelon
Posted Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007, at 1:39 PM ET
Illustration by Robert Neubecker. Click image to expand.

In his new book, Children at Play: An American History, Brown University historian Howard Chudacoff gives us the following late-19th-century snapshot of a mother-daughter outing to a city park: "The older person, quietly seated beside the footpath, is half absorbed in reverie. … The other, left to her own devices, wanders contented within the limited scope, incessantly prattling to herself; now climbing an adjoining rock, now flitting like a bird from one side of the pathway to the other."

It's an entirely approving portrayal written by an educator of the period named William Wells Newell, which Chudacoff offers as a rare recognition of the importance of children's free play. But to me, and I'd wager to a lot of parents, it's all too sinkingly familiar. Yes, the kid seems happy enough. But what about that daydreaming mother—shouldn't she be turning over pine cones and acorns with her daughter, or at least talking to her once in a while? Is that mom really giving her daughter the latitude to discover nature, explore the world, think her own thoughts—or is she just lazy?

This is the question I ask myself when my kids say, "Play with me!" and all I really want to do is collapse with a good book. Alas, nothing I've read on the subject has really given me the license to blithely bury myself and send them on their way—at least, not as often as I would like. Chudacoff points out that in previous generations, mothers like me said, without agonizing, " 'Don't bother me, go and play outside.' " And there is plenty of evidence that parents shouldn't invade their kids' play, or stage-direct it, or herd them from one structured activity to the next. But real free play with your kids, when they run around and you try to catch them, or you build a fort out of blankets and couches together, or cut out paper dolls? It's pretty hard to argue that's not a pure and unadulterated good thing, if we have the patience for it.

In tracing the history of play over the American centuries, Chudacoff makes the mid-17th century sound like our own time, only better. "Adults were much less self-conscious about what types of play were appropriate for different age groups than would be the case by the time of the American Revolution," he writes. Parents and kids played the same games together: blind man's bluff, find-the-bean, cards, puzzles. Or they "whiled away the time in each other's company, talking, singing, reading, and simply being together." Later, the idyll ebbed. Lines were drawn to mark off childhood as a separate domain. The era of sobriety and duty came along, followed by educational, good-for-you play, followed by obsessive attention to safety.

Kids won a burst of autonomy in the first half of the 20th century, when there were still woods and parks at hand to roam, yet fewer chores than on the farms of yore. But parental fear and suburban development slammed the door shut again. Chudacoff cites findings from a recent survey showing that after school and on the weekends, kids on average spend only one half-hour a week in unstructured play outside, compared to 14.5 hours playing inside, and 12 more hours watching television.

Perhaps it's the move indoors that led to more calls to the adults for entertainment. At my house, inside play often seems to require aid. My sons, Eli and Simon, need my husband or me to find a crucial piece of Lego, or to construct a ramp to race their cars down. With the zealotry of future card sharps, they insist on endless hands of War or Uno or Rummy 500. Sometimes, Eli and Simon play, just the two of them. But at 7 and 4, their age difference can still be hard to span. Frankly, they just like it better when we're down on the floor with them.

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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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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

(To reply, click here.)

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

(To reply, click here.)

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

(To reply, click here.)

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

(To reply, click here.)

(10/13)

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