Come Play
with Me!
Written By Lynne Bertrand
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I became a keen observer — daresay, a spy — in the world of play. I noticed that the teachers at my kids' preschool organized tidy play spaces and brought out one captivating thing at a time. (Captivating even to the adults.) I listened in as one of our babysitters, Liza, played make-believe in the same attentive way she talked with her girlfriends, asking questions she genuinely cared about. I watched my parents pour themselves each a cup of coffee and sit down on the floor with the kids, not up on the couch.
Taking the Plunge
Accumulating little epiphanies in this way, I gradually remembered and redefined how to play. It wasn't always pretty. I was having trouble playing dollhouse with my daughter, Georgia, who was 3 years old at the time. She had firm ideas of how the script should read; I didn't feel like being baby Star-Flower anymore. Every day for a week, I gave up and slunk off to get my chores done, leaving us both feeling blue. Then one night, after she fell asleep, I tidied up the zillions of toys strewn all over the house and, drawing on what I'd seen at preschool, I set up one captivating thing: a festive parade of little people, cars, and animals lined up across the living room floor. In the morning, you'd have thought it was Christmas. Georgia and my then-6-year-old son, Nick, found this scene enchanting. They played all morning with the characters in it. I just sat between them, with my cup of coffee, relaxed and inspired enough to "be" both a tiny red fox and a white Camaro.
