Childish Things All Grownups Should Do

A friend just posted an article entitled, “40 Hilarious Ways to Make Sure You Never Become a ‘Real Adult’.” The list included everything from silly ideas like wearing a costume in public (awesome) and playing in a bouncy house (also awesome) to vaguely immature things like potty humor (gross) and picking your nose (seriously gross) to totally fun stuff like building a pillow fort (I’m all over that) and eating junk food for dinner (you’d better believe I’m all over that). But I have a couple more ideas that they missed. Here are five more ideas of how to recapture the innocent joys of childhood.

1. Catch snowflakes on your tongue

Since it will be snowing for pretty much the entire day today, you’ll have plenty of chances to try this one. So put on your parka, your snow boots, your muffler, your hat, and your warmest mittens, go outside, lean your head back, and open your mouth. (Best to not do this one while standing under a tree.) Let the chilly flakes settle on your face like frozen feathers. Feel the flecks of ice melting on your tongue. Enjoy the silence.

2. Squish stuff between your fingers and toes

Shaving cream. Play-doh. Wet sand. Ground beef. (Be sure to wash your hands before and after). Scrambled eggs. (Ditto.) Snow. Mud. Clay. Anything you can find that’s squishable, squish it. Revel in the sensory thrill. Listen for the deliciously disgusting squelching noise. Watch for the soft eruptions between your fingers and toes. Look for the sculptured swirls and patterns that result.

3. Pretend

This is best done with kids, since they’re the uncontested masters of playing pretend, but it can be done by yourself or with other adults. Be a superhero. Be a pirate. Be a knight in shining armor. Be a racecar driver. Be the President of the United States. Be a cartoon villain. Be a giraffe or a monkey or a llama or a platypus. Don’t forget to incorporate costumes, voices, and props. Exercise that imagination. Bonus points if you do it in public.

4. Run

No, not running as in when you put on $300 shoes and a $700 GPS watch that maps your trail, monitors your heart rate, and reminds you to call your mother. Not running as in when you hop on the treadmill and watch the miles rack up. Running as in when you tear around your house for no particular reason. Running as in when you race across an open field just to feel the wind in your hair. Running as in chasing someone else just to make them squeal. Running as in squealing yourself simply for the joy of it. Running as in just enjoying the power of your own body. Running just for the sake of running. Just run.

5. Color

Get out some crayons (you know there’s a bunch in your house somewhere, probably at the back of the kitchen junk drawer) and some paper (whatever you have on hand: printer paper, construction paper, post-it notes, the back of the credit card solicitations that appear in your mailbox twice a week like clockwork, if you have kids you can even use a few pages from one of their coloring books), and go to work. Draw a self portrait, draw your house, draw your dream vacation. Draw some abstract or geometric figures and color them in. Experiment with colors and shapes and shading. Don’t worry about whether it’s artistic or not, just color. Once you get over your own inhibitions, I bet you’ll find it very cathartic.

Now go out there and be a kid! You’ll be a better adult for it.

You Gotta Play the Game

Every once in a while, I’ll do something with my kids, or with my whole family, that reminds me of something I did with my parents when I was a kid. It might be camping, or cooking, or going apple picking, or reading a story out loud. Last night, it was playing board games.

I grew up in a household where we played games ALL THE TIME. We’d sit in front of the fireplace in the evening and play Life or Sorry or Trouble, we’d sit around the dining room table and play Uno or spoons, we’d sit inside our camper and play cribbage or backgammon by the light of the lantern. We’d even play all kinds of games in the car: finding the letters of the alphabet in order on signs, checking off license plates from all 50 states, a game called “Wordy Gurdy” where all the answers have to rhyme (What do you call counterfeit dollar bills? Funny money!), sometimes we’d bring along a Mad Libs pad. We had a stack of board games on the shelf in the closet, another stack behind the couch, a whole drawer full of decks of cards and books with rules for hundreds of card games, and a bag of travel-sized games in the coat closet. 

When we were small, we played Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, checkers, Old Maid, Don’t Break the Ice, War, and Operation. When we were a bit older, we played Boggle, Clue, Monopoly, Milles Bornes, Waterworks, Probe, dominos, and Yahtzee. When we had friends over, or at birthday parties, we played Twister, Pictionary, Taboo, and Scattergories. When it was just my sister and I, we’d play 2-person games like Battleship and Chinese Checkers and Simon and double solitaire and Mastermind.

I didn’t realize at the time how many skills I was learning by playing these games. Candyland and Sorry taught me colors and how to count. Chutes and Ladders taught me not to be disappointed by a setback. Operation and Don’t Break the Ice taught me fine motor skills. Boggle and Probe taught me spelling and vocabulary. Cribbage taught me math. Checkers and Battleship and Risk taught me strategy. Clue taught me logic. Monopoly taught me patience (and, with my sister’s help, how to make change). Pictionary and Taboo taught me to think creatively.

So now, when my kids ask to play a game, I look forward to not just having fun with them, but to the opportunity to teach them new skills. I can teach them to be good sports (and most especially, good losers), I can teach them that math and spelling can be fun, I can teach them to be patient and polite, I can teach them to be fair, I can teach them to think through their decisions and their actions, I can teach them that sometimes life isn’t fair. And most importantly, I can teach them that spending time together with friends and family is a good thing. A very good thing. 

The Games People Play

My son loves games. He loves active games like Hide and Seek, Catch, and Simon Says. He loves board games like Candyland and Chutes and Ladders. He loves brain games like I Spy and What Shapes Do You See. But the games he loves best of all are the ones he makes up himself.

The first game he ever made up was something he calls “Bing, Bang, Boom.” This is a game played by two people using two large balls. The players each hold a ball and sit about 6 feet apart, then chant, “Bing…bang…BOOM!” and on the word “BOOM” they roll the balls toward each other and try to crash them together. When they crash, both players laugh uproariously, chase the balls, and do it all over again.

Another recent favorite is “Soccer Falling.” Another two-player game, this one requires only one ball. The players stand facing each other a few feet apart, and one player kicks the ball to the other. Instead of kicking it back, the receiving player immediately falls over. Cue uproarious laughter. My daughter helped create a 3-player variation of this game where the third player randomly wanders in between the other two and either kicks the ball back to the first player (usually by accident) or gets hit by the ball and falls over. This variation is somewhat less popular because it occasionally ends in tears instead of uproarious laughter.

He’s also created a whole series of dancing games that can be played by any number of players, from one person right on up to however many can fit in the room. These games generally have names like, “Penguin Dance,” “Robot Dance,” and “Silly Chicken Dance,” even though there’s no resemblance to a penguin, a robot, or a silly chicken that I can see. I’m not even really clear on what the difference between these games is, as they all seem to involve madly stomping, flailing, wriggling, shimmying, twirling, and spinning around on the floor like a manic break-dancer. But that fact doesn’t bother him in the least.

Explaining one of his games to cousins John and Catherine.

 

I love that these games are further proof that he can find ways to entertain himself. I love that he understands the concept that games have rules, even if he often changes them. I love that he’s occasionally willing to let his little sister join in his games. I love that he uses his body creatively. I love that he totally cracks himself up when he plays them. And I love how completely uninhibited and unselfconscious he is whenever he plays any of them.

But most of all, I love how uninhibited and unselfconscious I am when I play those games with him. Anyone want to join me for a few rounds of “Silly Chicken Dance”?

 

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

This morning I was puttering in the kitchen while Ryan was playing in the hallway when suddenly I felt a cool draft and heard a small voice chanting, “Ball! Ball! Ball!” Ryan had discovered how to open the front door and was eagerly pointing at the neighbor’s basketball hoop. The smell of the fresh spring air was as tempting to me as it was to him, so we both got our sneakers on, grabbed a ball, and went to explore the neighborhood.

Our house is oddly situated, in that our street is divided into two unconnected parts. The upper road is essentially a large driveway shared by three houses (including ours), and by cutting through our yard we can reach the lower road, which is a long cul-de-sac with a wide open circle at the end. Since it doesn’t connect to anything, there is no traffic other than the dozen or so residents, which makes it an ideal play area. An added bonus is that one of the neighbors has a basketball hoop set up facing the street that is welcome to be used by all. So Ryan naturally loves to play there.

On this outing, as usual, the first thing he wanted to do was to shoot some hoops. I was happy to rebound for him, particularly since his shots rarely go more than 3 feet or so away from the hoop. After shooting for a while, we threw, rolled, and kicked the ball back and forth. And then Ryan decided it was time to explore, so we trotted down the street to check some things out. The first thing he discovered was a whole lot of sticks on the ground. There were long, skinny, bendy twigs that wiggled when he shook them. There were big fat sticks that were good for whacking other sticks. There were several sticks that were almost broken in half, and Ryan was fascinated by breaking them completely and then trying to put them back together again.

When he tired of that game, we walked some more, and discovered a use for frost heaves (possibly the only use): tromping up and down on them! There were several sections of sidewalks with deep heaves, and Ryan explored climbing up and down, at first holding tightly to Mummy’s hand, but then gaining confidence and climbing up and down as nimbly as a little mountain goat.

Before he got a chance to tire of that game, he discovered another fun by-product of New England winters: sump pumps! Several of the neighbors have sump pump hoses running into the street, and the water table is apparently still high enough that they occasionally spit out some water. It makes for the perfect depth of puddles to splash in without needing galoshes, and Ryan took advantage of the wet sidewalks to stomp to his heart’s delight.

But wait, we discovered yet another fun winter by-product: sand piles. One of Ryan’s favorite play areas at the church nursery is the sand box, so it was no surprise that he quickly discovered a pile of sand next to the curb. He patted it with his hands, smoothing the surface and then poking it and running his finger through to make shapes and patterns. And then he began grabbing handfuls of it and watching it run through his fingers. He attempted to give me handfuls, and seemed quite puzzled that by the time he got it into my hand, there were only a few grains left. He then discovered that he could throw handfuls of it, and amused himself by watching it scatter in the wind. He even leaned over and tried to taste it, but I discouraged that quite quickly.

In between all these discoveries, we checked out a whole bunch of other fascinating things around the neighborhood: a chain link fence, a neighbor’s abandoned sidewalk chalk, a few beach balls, a fire hydrant, a manhole cover, a robin singing in a tree. He even found a piece of trash on the ground, picked it up, and before I could take it away from him, ran over to someone’s trash can that was left out from yesterday’s trash pick up, and carefully threw it away!

It’s easy to forget how many fascinating and new things there are in your own neighborhood until you take a look at it through a child’s eyes. Those frost heaves, that sump pump puddle and the unsightly pile of sand may remind us adults of the winter that’s just passed, but to a child, they are delightful playthings of spring!

Toyland

Ryan is very creative when he plays. He plays with just about anything that’s handy – a saucepan, a spoon, a vacuum nozzle, an empty box, my feet, his own feet. But he also loves to play with his toys – sometimes in the way they were designed, and sometimes not. Plastic stacking rings can, of course, be stacked on their peg – but they can also but balanced on one’s head, dropped into a bucket, or have a ball balanced in them. Balls can be rolled and bounced as intended, but also climbed on, stuffed into various cubbies and crevices, and licked. (The licking thing is true about pretty much anything he can reach with his tongue, but semi-see-through balls are especially fun to lick, since crazy Mommy can easily be tempted to lick the other side, which is a source of endless amusement. But I digress.)

So a few days ago, I decided to capture Ryan playing with his toys on video. So here, for your entertainment, I present “Two Minutes of Toys!”

So now if anyone ever asks me what Ryan and I do all day long, I can show them this video and explain that this is what we do all day. Over and over and over and over again. This, times 30 times an hour, times 12 hours a day. With the occasional break for eating, napping, and diaper changes.

Have I mentioned lately that I have the best job in the whole wide world?

Just a Spoonful of Sugar

Spoons are wonderful things. Not only are they useful and functional as food transporters (and as drumsticks), but they are also useful and functional in extending one’s reach. They can be used to knock objects off of tables that were formerly out of reach! They can be used to explore objects on top of the countertop that cannot even be seen. Spoons can be used to poke behind the couch, knock books off the bookshelf, bang pots on the stovetop, and reach otherwise unreachable items on the kitchen table.

Ryan may not be short by any means in terms of the height of most children his age, but he seems to be extremely aware that the world was designed to be explored by someone much taller than he. Spoons, however, have minimized this problem. He has a long-handled plastic mixing spoon that he plays with in the kitchen, and until recently it served mainly as a drumstick – he used it to bang on pots, pans, the colander, the doors of the kitchen cabinets, and the shins of unwary passers-by. But then he discovered that he can use it to extend his reach and explore all kinds of formerly unreachable places.

The kitchen counter, for example. He can’t see what’s on top of the counter when he’s right next to it, and he can’t reach past the very edge of the counter with his bare hands. But give him his long-handled spoon and, like the tentacle of a curious octopus, he uses it to poke and prod and feel his way across the countertop, poking at a squishy loaf of bread, banging on the wooden side of the breadbox, clanging on the rim of the sink.

The kitchen table is also deliciously in reach with spoon in hand. When he’s strapped into his high chair next to the table, his reach is frustratingly short – he can barely touch the edge of the tabletop. But add a spoon into the equation and he can flap the leaves of the flower arrangement on the center of the table, knock down the collection of birthday cards like so many dominos, and make the salt and pepper shakers roll across the table and onto the floor with a satisfying clunk.

The music room is another place that’s especially satisfying to explore with a spoon. All those low piano notes that are just out of reach are back in play when you have a spoon. Strumming the guitar with a spoon is a new and exciting experience. And the tower of CDs next to the stereo that used to be just beyond his fingertips can all be knocked over with one swipe of the spoon.

Like most children in this day and age, Ryan has a large collection of playthings that are technological wonders. He has a play phone with keys that light up and play music and read the alphabet to him, he has a wheeled zebra that sings and makes animal noises at the touch of a button, he has a plastic car with an elephant sitting in it that trumpets and zooms across the room. And he loves all those toys, and plays with them for hours. But when it comes right down to it, sometimes he’s just as happy to amuse himself with an old plastic spoon.