Making Time to Play

When I moan about my children constantly being surgically attached to their electronic screens, I sometimes could be guilty of forgetting that it is partly my fault.

Yes, I decided to buy them in the first place, yes I am the one who lets them play on them.  Yes I am the one who probably moans the most about the lack of response I get when they are on them, the constant battle to get them to the end of that level; you know the one that they have to finish before they can come off their precious device and that conveniently lasts for an hour.

But the guilt is something different and it comes from my lack of time to play.

We do things together as a family on a regular basis and I know that we all benefit from our hours out walking, playing in the park, going to different places.  But how often do I actually stop and play? If I'm really honest, I have to say not a lot.  

I moan about them always saying things like 'in a minute' and 'just let me do this.."  but those phrases are the ones that I utter all too often in response to a request to do something with them. I am the biggest offender when it comes to putting other things before playing.  I know that life is busy.  Since returning to work, I am busier, tireder and generally trying to juggle more balls than I can manage.  But is that a good excuse?  I know that it isn't.

If you have read my blog in the past, you will know that I have written about how quickly children grow up and how you should make the most of them. Having an eighteen year old, I know that from personal experience. It goes so quickly.  So maybe I need to take notice of my own advice.

This came to a head this week when R who is in a particularly testy mood of late, has been nagging me to play a game of Scabble Trickster.  It is his favourite game and I do love playing it.  But.  It takes quite a long time to play.  It involves lots of little cards and tiles that mean little Miss A is naturally drawn to the game and this can be awkward. It also usually upsets L as he often starts the game and then gets frustrated and stomps off in a huff.  Yes, yes, I have a whole load of excuses as you can see.

Procrastination is the name of this game.

He also picks his moments.  He seems to wait for that moment; the one where you are just about to make tea, half an hour before bedtime and other choice times when it really isn't convenient. Of course, he is nine and he doesn't see the bigger picture.  He doesn't understand that I am busy or tired, he just wants a bit of time with me.  So after the third brush off, he became really cross and accused me of never wanting to play with him and never having time for him.  Before I could utter any excuses or explain myself, he was gone.

My immediate reaction was one of annoyance of course.  How dare he?  Of course I made time for him...  Then I thought about it.  Did I?  Really?  In reality, probably not.  Well not very often anyway.

Yesterday I had a million things to do and he asked me again.  I did put him off for an hour as I needed to get a few jobs done, but I promised him that it would happen.  And it did.  We sat down together and played a game for an hour.  It was really lovely.  He was smiling and laughing.  We had a really good laugh.  He also beat me (and I didn't let him, I had the worst letters ever!)

It reminded me that I need to make time to play.  It doesn't need to take a long time. Ten minutes here and there or even an hour or two, it doesn't really matter.  The hoovering, the washing, the ironing, the cooking, social media, it can all wait for a while.  Because the children won't be young forever and when they are grown up and gone off to have lives and families of their own, I don't want them to look back and remember me as the mum that never played with them.