Hi,
It’s time to lay it all out, folks.
I will confess: sometimes, when my son Lorenzo picks up his copy of The Gruffalo to hear me read it out loud while he plays with the animals that appear in it (he owns a stuffed toy version of the gruffalo itself and a mouse), I wish I could disappear or just put on an audio recording of myself reading it instead.
Don’t get me wrong. I love reading, I know that reading out loud is great for kids, I quite like The Gruffalo as a book, and I often find playing fun. But doing the same sequence of events over and over and over again simply bores me. Of course the game changes, and we rarely make it to the end of the book, but it can become quite numbing just the same.
I’m not one to be easily bored and I like to think of myself as a children’s advocate. But when Lorenzo decides to jump from one step into the next, over and over again, how do I sustain the joy? What about the times he plays with stacking cups and asks me to hold them while he builds and destroys the stacks again and again? Why can’t he just play alone and let me be? And I don’t even spend the whole day with him!
Lorenzo is one and a half years old. Some parents say that kids’ play becomes more boring as they grow a little older. Think of role play where you have to be the daughter and your child has to feed you, because they’re the parent.
In a recent podcast by Radio Ambulante, NPR’s Spanish-language podcast, Lucienne Hernández, an actress in Puerto Rico, who makes a living out of acting and playing roles, confessed that she simply can’t stand having to follow her daughter’s script. She feels stuck, she says.
But why does playing with our kids bore us adults?
I know exactly how important it is for kids to play, because I’ve written about it. I also know that playing is a biological need for children, and that adults tend to see it somewhat differently: they think kids are creating a mess and breaking valuables. In the piece I wrote I offered potential suggestions on how to make play less conflictive for kids and parents inside the home. (Think of your crisp white walls: why not put large sheets of paper at the bottom to turn half of the wall into a whiteboard for kids?)
This is not what I’m talking about here. What I want to ask is: why – even with all this theoretical knowledge – do I simply get bored?
Is it because I resent not having more time for myself? Is it because I don’t know how to have fun playing anymore as an adult? Or is it because my son’s favourite games are simply boring to an adult? And more importantly: what’s the point of me playing if I’m not into the game at all? I’m sure that if I don’t have fun, Lorenzo’s experience becomes as frustrating as mine.
My exploration of play is far from over, and I want to ask you, our members, for input: do you sometimes find playing with your kids boring? Have you asked yourself why? What conclusions have you reached, and what solutions have you found? I will be exploring this in an upcoming piece, so please help me out, and ask your friends to contribute too, under this piece. Send them this email: they can subscribe to this newsletter here, even if they are not a member of The Correspondent. The more voices I hear from, the better.
But I don’t want to leave you with the feeling that I don’t find play fun any more. So, in order to reestablish my cred as a child advocate, check out the cool way this 9-month-old plays. He covers the entire room and touches everything!
How do we talk about our toughest issues?
The news of an immigration jail in the US that has allegedly carried out involuntary sterilisations has kept me awake at night.
A whistleblower report filed by the human rights group Project South alleges that many migrant women held at a privately-run immigration detention centre received hysterectomies that they did not want and which were not medically necessary.
Sexual and reproductive rights should be the realm of delicate, private decision-making. But they are often a subject of political debate and imposed decisions. Something similar happens in the case of abortion.
So, how do you talk about these tough issues? We’ve decided to ask this question together with my colleagues Patrick Chalmers and Nabeelah Shabbir. Patrick writes on political literacy here at The Correspondent, and Nabeelah is our conversation editor.
We ask: If political literacy starts with awareness of our identities, could anything be more political than the moment of conception and what happens next? Who should choose if, and when, to start another human’s first 1,000 days? How best might we handle peacefully the politics of birth?
The chat will take place on 28 September at 15:00 CEST (also International Safe Abortion Day), and we will have some great guests, including Argentina’s feminist lawyer Sabrina Cartabia and Uganda’s campaigner Rosebell Kagumire.
You can find out more about how to join here.
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Thanks for following and until next week!
Irene
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