re: Keep Kids Creative - Play With Them

Knitty — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:52:58 GMT

Oh, here we go again.

Playing with your kids is not your "job." Your job as a parent is to ensure that your kids are safe, clean, fed, receiving an education, etc. Kids are perfectly capable of playing on their own, or (gasp!) with other kids.

Keep in mind that this whole "you MUST spend endless hours playing with your kids or you suck" idea is very, very recent, entirely cultural, and carries more than a whiff of privilege. Plenty of parents are too busy making ends meet and meeting their children's basic needs to get down on the floor and roll around with the little ones for hours a day -- does that make them "bad parents?" And what about parents who do really odd things like keep their children out of school (see this week's Bad Parent) because they fear school will sap their child's precious creativity? Does she deserve a gold star for motherhood because she spends hours he should be in school playing with him?

I personally play with my daughter because I enjoy it, but my own mother never, not even once, got down on the floor to play with me. She cooked, she cleaned, she bathed us, she gave endless hugs and kisses and read us stories and listened with endless patience, but playing? Not her thing.

And she was a damn good parent.

re: Keep Kids Creative - Play With Them

Veronica — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:55:30 GMT

I don't think it's a parent's "job" to play for hours on end. Little baby monkeys play with other little baby monkeys. Kittens play with the other kittens.

Just sayin.