Time to Pretend

Kids need play right now, and so do we

The first Saturday morning of our shelter-in-place was drizzly and gray. My four-year-old son came bounding into our bedroom, climbed over me in a way that somehow involved like, nine elbows, and said “Mama, it’s a great day to go to a cozy cafe!!”

This was the first of many times in the last month that I have had to explain to my child that we can’t do something we used to do. By this point, he no longer asks. But those weeks/eons ago, caught up in desire, I sent the kids and their dad out for a walk in the rain, put a sign on the back door that said “Rain or Shine Cafe” (inspired by our favorite rainy day children’s book), wrote out a menu, and prepped the table with a random assortment of cake platters and leftover birthday party decor. When my family came home I took their orders, served them hot cocoa and cookies, and pressured them for a generous tip.

If you are worried that I am some kind of Lisa Simpson, over-achiever parent, rather than the Homer Simpson, peanut-butter-smeared-on-a-playing-card-in-your-lunchbox kind of parent, don’t be. I didn’t do the Rain or Shine Cafe for my kids. I did it for me.

Like most of you, I became a fan of imaginary play during good ol’ childhood, when I had lots of siblings and lots of unstructured time. But the “play geek” in me really emerged in grad school, when I read Richard Bromfield’s Playing for Real, in which a play therapist tells the stories of the elaborate, endless journeys of imagination he has followed children on, which often end in some kind of therapeutic catharsis for the kiddos. This man makes the tale of a sexually-abused child hunting for lost staples in his office rug feel like a James Patterson thriller.

Bromfield writes that “Like a good harbor, the child therapist offers the besieged child physical shelter, tolerance of her defensive preoccupation (therapy talk for how we can focus on something random and neutral as a way to protect ourselves from a real threat - the staples), and a rare opportunity to let down her guard and rest.” This book made me see play not just as the privilege of childhood but as childhood’s machinery - the ish that children move through to build themselves out of this mess we’ve given them.

It doesn’t take a play therapy nerd to see that kids are working this current cluster-fuck out in their play. My daughter has added frequent hand-washing to her toy-kitchen preparations of “sprinkle cookies” and “yoga tea.” My son is making himself the protector in every game, scooting alongside me as my “kitty police escort” on every hurried walk around the block. It is a jarring but reasonable idea to toss a mask into your child’s dress-up bin right now. Children need to act out what is happening to them in order to survive it.

I have tried, and failed, to do play therapy with kids. I just wasn’t born with the attention span. I am sorry to report that I am still struggling to engage in the play of my own children during this at-home adventure (not that “Mama Jaba the Hut” isn’t a worthy role). But, I have been but creating my own play scenarios, giving myself the “good harbor” Bromfield describes. A place free from six-foot measurements, death tolls, economic uncertainty. A place where I can regress, fantasize, rewrite the day’s frustrations with myself as the author, the one in control.

When I “let down my guard and rest” in the shelter of play, I can act out a missed vacation on Google Earth with my son (“now we take a taxi to Grammy’s house, look at the tulips in her front yard!”), assign my husband the role of me while I impersonate my kids touching literally every surface on the street and then licking each other’s hands (true story), and surprise my family with various ridiculous costumes when I return from a few hours of the extended brain fart we are now calling “work.”

This pic of my all-time favorite athlete Paul Pierce dressed as a frog never fails to get me in the mood

As we enter into, gasp, Month Two of this, I invite you to join me in the time-tested act of play. Play with your children, yes, sure, fine. If and when you have the bandwidth. But more importantly, be your own play therapist, down on the rug saying “yes, these staples are dangerous, thank you for keeping us safe.” Pretend to be Mitch McConnell pleading his case at the gates of heaven, and deliver the brutal verdict from the angels. Drape a sheet around your body and declare yourself the Queen-of-Useless-Groceries, bestowing subpar panic buys (Stevia chocolate chips anyone??) upon your subjects. Get ridiculous. Get nasty. Get your play on.

Another lovely piece: How to See the World When You’re Stuck at Home