Playground parable - what we can learn from child's play

 

I was sitting in a playground with my firstborn last summer looking about me and had a strange dissociative moment when I looked at the children playing and their parents supervising and thought about how weird it would be when one day that would be my life; completely oblivious, in just that moment, that this WAS my life.

Just as grief has its well publicised staged pathway culminating in acceptance perhaps the same is true for parenting and that one has to work through denial, anger, bargaining and the rest before finally accepting that yes you are a parent.

But maybe it was just that playgrounds were such an unfamiliar environment. There are literally signs in them forbidding unaccompanied adults. Since then I have spent a lot more time in playgrounds, other than during the first lockdown when they were locked up like Hebrides playgrounds on the Sabbath.

It's a pity that the childless are so unwelcome because I have formulated what I think is a brilliant business plan. Playground child rental. Those considering breeding can rent children of various ages by the hour or two while the parents can put their feet up nearby with a coffee. That way parents in waiting can try before they buy while the troops get some much needed R&R away from the trenches: two income streams one product.

While that is obviously wishful thinking it does nonetheless seem to me a shame that only parents get to enjoy one of the real privileges of the playground which is watching children play. It is quite remarkable how unabashed children are at joining in with play. It is also a real lesson to those of us that have forgotten childhood how important unstructured play is.

If you think about your adult life it is quite likely that it contains no unstructured play at all. Everything is organised and yet everybody knows that the first rule of organised fun is that it's NOT fun. Last weekend I was back in the playground (there's certainly nothing else to do and mercifully they're still open). The 4 year old immediately fell in with some older boys, I reckon about 7 or 8 years old. May not seem much of an age gap but it's like me striking up a friendship with a random 80 year old on the bus.

I was momentarily worried that they would spurn him on account of being so little but instead enfolded him immediately in their not at all gender normative game of running around with sticks pretending they were guns. There were no rules, there was no point to it but in 25 minutes he had more fun than I've had all year.

So I suppose the moral of the story is: make more friends, make more fun.