Child's play isn't just for children

Few requests from my son are more of a lance in the side than the plaintive enquiry ‘Daddy, will you play me?’ He invariably asks this while I’m in the middle of an email to a solicitor or the CPS, a phone call to the clerks, drafting a skeleton argument or reviewing unused material. The inevitable reply is ‘later’ but later always seems to be tea time, bath time or bed time. 

One of the cruel ironies of the increase in working from home is that although my children see more of me that does not mean they get more of me. The obvious thing to observe here is that I shall resolve to carve out more time for the children because they’re only young once. 

Possibly less obvious is that for me sometimes playing with the children is, if not an intimidating prospect, then certainly an unsettling one. Truth is that I’m not very good at playing. Being occupied in the most ruly profession means that when the opportunity presents itself to let my imagination run riot I can’t even offer a lowly affray. 

My son’s school recently had a creative writing competition. They received well over 200 short stories and poems from the pupils which were turned into an impressively professional book. Reading this book has been like having a golden passport to the boundlessly bountiful territory of children’s imagination. A place so fertile precisely because it is unencumbered with rules and conventions and structure. 

I watched Hook with the children a few months back and while Robin Williams utterly convinces as an overgrown Peter Pan he makes the most improbable corporate lawyer. Nonetheless, the central message of the film hits pretty hard when you watch it in the thick of the competing demands of work and parenting. 

It is natural as a parent to worry about what and how we should teach our children but what should never be overlooked is what they teach us and chief among the lessons we must learn is that the imagination needs to be exercised as much as the brain and the heart. 

Children access their imagination in a completely uninhibited way. My 5 year old insists at the moment upon travelling around London wearing a robe and paper crown because every journey from home is a quest and it’s only a matter of time before the Holy Grail is found. I haven’t yet found the courage to accompany him as Lancelot but I feel that I really should. 

One thing I know in my bones is that if I do not give him this time now a time will undoubtedly come when I call him for company eliciting the certain reply ‘Sorry dad, took much on at work’.