How to Play With Your Children Without Feeling Bored
Are you your child’s pandemic playmate? Here’s how to actually enjoy child’s play.
“The days are long, but the years are short” Gretchen Rubin wrote in The Happiness Project.
True, but those days are really, really long when you’re playing your umpteenth game of Candyland.
Let’s get something out of the way right now. My youngest child is now 19. I am that middle-aged woman who smiles fondly at you as you struggle to keep one toddler from climbing out of the shopping cart while stopping a preschooler from tossing everything her little heart desires into the cart and all this with a newborn strapped to your chest.
“I was you once,” my smile says. “I remember those days through the rose-colored mist of time that takes away the unrelenting exhaustion that is parenting little ones.”
Thankfully it is only my smile doing the talking as I made a solemn vow to myself as a young parent that I would never, ever do something as stupid as to tell a mom, “Enjoy these years. They go so fast.”
I might, if you look like you would appreciate it, say, “You’re doing an excellent job. Hang in there.” Because it is the truth. If you make it through a day with small children and everyone is still…
