I Don’t Play Like Daddy

I’ve heard and read claims that dads are more likely to rough-house with kids: wrestle, throw up in the air, and be generally more physical. That’s not true at our house. The difference between Cavanaugh playing with Mike or me is that I can not sit around for long periods unless I feel like we’re doing something.

Playing trains does not feel like doing something to me. The trains go around and around the track. I get bored quickly. If Cavanaugh and I make up some elaborate story about one of the trains picking up mail and delivering it to various other trains, my attention span lengthens a bit, so he may get ten minutes from me at the table instead of two before I start trying to multi-task.

Likewise, at the park or some other place where we might meet up with other parents and kids for a playgroup, I like for Cavanaugh to run up the ramps, slide, dig in the gravel loading his dump truck with his excavator. I’m happy to sit next to him or help him on playground equipment, if he needs it, but my preferred activity is to hang out and talk to the other moms. When Mike takes Cavanaugh to these places or even out into our yard, he is content to dig, climb, and otherwise play with Cavanaugh.

I don’t think I ever really played like this, not as a kid and not now. I’m trying to learn, but the truth is, I just don’t like it. In Playful Parenting, Lawrence Cohen writes about the messages we give our kids when we don’t want to play the games they like or when we say it’s boring (whether literally or by just checking out with our attention or physical presence).  Cohen’s advice throughout Playful Parenting has helped my parenting immensely. It helps me not get into so many power struggles, to change the dynamic with a silly voice, to elicit conversation, and to generally just be more present with my kid. I don’t think my parents were particularly playful either. They liked to read books just like I do.

I realized recently I buy toys for Cavanaugh as frequently for myself as for him. Wow, am I tried of building towers with duplo blocks; maybe we would like shape matching dominoes. Mostly, I just want to sit next to my kid and be with him, not thinking about something else, just looking him in the eye and being with him. I can do that while we do puzzles, paint, bake, or engage in other games or activities that lead somewhere and have an end.

My husband, on the other hand, went to the park with Cavanaugh today and just threw rocks into the puddle below the bridge. And grass too. Cavanaugh came home with mud all over him (something he gets with me when I’m gardening and have created a dirtscape for him nearby so he can play with trucks while I weed, plant or dig with a planned and productive end.  They’d drawn chalk roads on the bridge and sidewalk. Cavanaugh was thrilled. Mike had a good time too. I would have been miserable, looking for an excuse to come home and play something I liked.

Though I’m working on that, I’ve got to say, I’m so grateful Cavanaugh has his dad to do it differently. While you’re not likely to ever hear a tale of me spending an hour throwing things into a puddle, unless I was playing Pooh sticks and there was an elaborate story involved so I could stay engaged for that long, I realize it’s doubtful I would ever come home and find that Mike and Cavanaugh had cut sponges into shapes to paint with or made an egg hunt from origami birds, kid vitamins and Hello Kitty stickers. Thankfully, Cavanaugh has both of us, and his nanny to make boats with flags in them, and his gramma to draw buses on a dry erase table or sit in a sandbox and do “hard work.”

Maybe I’ve finally figured out that not everybody has to do it like me and I don’t have to do it all. What a relief. (You may need to remind me again later).

How do differently people in your child’s life play with him or her?