Play
Here is a small collection of articles some guy put together on what the experts have been saying about play lately. Fun stuff. It made me think of the way Laura’s whole life is one big Pretend game. Fantasy play is of course a pretty big deal when you are five years old. Laura can pretend so intensely, and for so long, that sometimes you just want to say “Can we stop and be ourselves now?” But you don’t.
She has this way of proposing her pretend scenarios, and updating them moment by moment, that is a combination of entreaty and order: “And I was the mermaid, and you were the mermaid’s Dad? and we were stuck in the seaweeds? and we were yelling for help? And then the prince came along?” And on and on for hours. When she is playing with another kid they will bat these statement/questions back and forth until they get a rhythm going, and sometimes it works so well, they are so busy talking about the pretend stories, that they don’t actually get around to playing them. With a grownup it never quite hits that groove, because we’re so much slower and more set in our ways I guess. Obviously we didn’t play enough when we were their age. I could have told you that then.
Categorised as: Laura