My beef with a fellow mother at the playground
I can’t believe I’m writing this.
Have you ever caught yourself acting like a cliched parent?
I have. All the damn time. I hear myself – ‘right I’m going to count three, two, one and if you’re not inside for dinner you can sit on your bed’ – and part of me marvels at my own banality.
At what point did I become a grown up? When did I cross the threshold from carefree young girl to grumpy, tetchy adult with the weight of responsibility on my shoulders?
Probably exactly around the time I had kids.
It’s wild though. Honestly, it feels like one minute I’m dancing in a Mykonos night club until 8am… and the next minute I’m getting excited when it’s a ‘good drying day’ for my washing.
Ooft.
But the biggest thing I’ve noticed about many grownups – me included – is that we forget how to play.
On the southern end of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, there’s a beautiful little spot called Kings Beach. We’re here wearing t-shirts in ‘winter’ and the skies are a vivid blue. Out across the turquoise waters, you can just glimpse Bribie Island in the distance.
There’s a playground right on the water’s edge, next to the concrete pathway that winds along the coast. The playground is designed as a pirate ship, with steps up to a platform, a slide down, a climbing wall and a fireman’s pole.
We’re walking there now from the holiday unit my mum has hired for the week. Over the past two years we’ve been travelling on the road, my mum has flown to all different parts of Australia to see us. Exmouth, Perth, and now the Sunshine Coast. We must be a good reason for her to travel.
As we walk down the hill toward the beach, my 6 year old daughter and 3 year old son see the playground and yelp with delight.
Playgrouuuuuunnndddd!
They kick off their crocs in unison and dive in. Within minutes they’re engrossed in play. It’s beautiful to watch.
The wonder of play
In his book ‘Flow’, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi outlines the three things you need to access flow state:
- A goal
- Skills that match the demands of the task
- Focused attention
I’ve spent a lot of time in our new nomadic life at playgrounds around the country. It’s given me a deep appreciation of the wonder of kids at play. Kids have an ability to throw themselves into a task with zeal that most of us grownups have long forgotten.
This is what kids have to offer us. And having spent so much more time with my kids on our travels, I’m finding that it’s rubbing off a little. I’m remembering how to play again.
But sadly, this opportunity seems to be lost on some grownups.
*****
We haven’t been playing for long when they arrive. I’m sitting lazily on a swing as I watch them.
A couple, two mum’s with cropped hair and denim shorts, walk up to the playground with their toddler, about two years old. The little boy sits down and takes off his shoes straight away. One of the mums fusses over him, do you want shorts on? The boy doesn’t answer and heads across the sand to the pirate ship.
On the walls of the pirate ship are these little green plastic knobs shaped like sharks. They’re on both sides of the wall, joined through a hole, so that when you spin a shark knob on one side, it also spins on the other side of the wall.
My daughter is standing on the sand outside the pirate ship fiddling with the shark knobs. The little boy wanders over to the wall underneath the pirate ship platform, on the opposite side to where my daughter is playing. He sees that the shark knobs are spinning, seemingly by themselves. The little boy’s face lights up with curiosity and fascination. He starts twisting the knobs himself, giggling when they wiggle back in response. My daughter gets the trick, but to his little eyes it’s magical.
The boy’s mum hasn’t seen this. She walks across to the pirate ship – ‘hey Louie come play on the slide. Have you seen the slide? It’s a big slide!’
The boy doesn’t hear her – or pretends not to. He’s engrossed in his shark spinners.
He’s clearly in flow state. He has:
- A goal – probably pure exploration?
- Skills – he has just enough dexterity to twist the knobs
- Focused attention – nothing else matters right now.
‘Louie, come and see the slide’ the woman instructs again.
I watch on with curiosity out of the corner of my eye. I’m intrigued that she doesn’t stop and see what’s interesting him. The playground designers clearly knew what they were doing. But as grownups we can lose that fascination with ordinary things. We seek bigger, better thrills – like slides and rollercoasters and drunken nights out.
The woman sees a structure with a clear, intended purpose. A slide to be slid down. Steps to be climbed.
(The other week I saw a baby, happily playing with sand between its fingers, be whisked up and placed on a swing.)
And too often, we lose the ability to simply observe. To quietly watch without the need to add inane commentary. To be humbled by the fact that a 2 year old may have more to show us about life than we could ever ‘teach’ them.
Some grownups never lose this. My mum is one of those people. Her favourite things in life are 1) her grandkids and 2) finding shells on the beach. I have a lot to learn from her, too.
The toddler keeps turning the shark dials. The boy’s mum wanders back to her partner. I feel a small sense of victory for the boy.
My boy Liam runs up to me. ‘Mum let’s play hide and seek!’
Great idea kiddo.
Then – after counting to 20 – my mum and I find them up a tree.
