Why don’t you enjoy playing with your children?

Do you sometimes don’t enjoy playing with your children?

In all the workshops that I teach about game, it is often common to not be able to play. In fact, I think that is one of the gifts that makes us the maternity or paternity. In addition to guilt as a new partner, the not being able to play tends to be another great “ally”.

And, why happens this to us? What a great question. My opinion is that this happens to us because we have that backpack that separates the game from everything else…

Phrases like, “stop playing to go to sleep” or “do not play in the table” or “wash your teeth, it is no longer the time for game”, they have only increased the distance between the game and life.

Because it seems that playing is one activity isolated from other experiences.

It is the cultural heritage that prevents us from integrating the game in any of our daily routines and activities.

However, it is becoming more evident, and so it is endorsed little by little the evolution and neuroscience, without emotion there is no learning. And the game is the way we discover the world. And not only children, but also us adults.

It is said that it is around the 11 years that we stopped playing and as said Bernard Shaw: “we don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing”. So, we have to find the game button in our bodies, always keep it ON and enjoy playing, not only with children, but also with each other, those beings called adults.

Because game is life and life is game… Or was it dream?

Who cares, if the important thing is to enjoy. Awake or asleep, playing is the solution to many of our problems.

So, let’s not make one more problem with game and learn to play. That playing is not only to propose, to guide, to direct. Play is watching, saying and listening. Because our children or children that we accompany, are playful and sometimes, if we are not comfortable in that game, we can observe and work our frustration.

Frustration not only for not wanting to play with them at some point, but because they don’t want to play with us. And “worse still”, that we propose an activity and that it is children who do not want to do it. Because we have worked a proposal for days, and they say no… do we let them live in that not or do we force them to participate? Perhaps we are dealing with a proposal that has taken us a lot of effort, not only in terms of research, but also in economic and time terms. A perfect proposal for Instagram, ideal to share, to teach and to explain…

Now it turns out that children don’t want to…

Great learning, yes! Frustration, pain, sadness… And what would happen if we gave ourselves to that no connecting with the children? How about we listen to them and see what they want to tell us? Maybe just giving us that day to their needs, or a few minutes or even several days, comes a time when our proposal makes more sense and it is completed with another experience together with our children.

Because the game makes impossible, possible, and it is we, adults, who have more problems when playing.

Enjoy playing. Enjoy watching. Enjoy being carried away.

Don’t judge, just observe.

Explore yourself and explore.

And most importantly, stay here and now… And trust that you know how to play.

If you are in doubt of your ability to play, on the 6th of march we start the workshop Games at home, from 0 to 4 years. We will accompany you for 10 days proposing challenges and resources each day to do at home. A chance to accompany your children accompanying also your frustration.

Because there will be days that you can’t play, and others that children do not want to play. But for sure there will be a lot of love and fun because game is this: discovery and connection.

I would only say, stop blaming yourself, stop preparing and organizing.  Let yourself go and you will enjoy even more playing, for sure!

Do we see each other on the 6th? I wait for you there!