The Way We Used to Play

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/parenting/kids-family-play.html

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As kids, my seven siblings and I would run around outside under the night sky, the summer-hard soles of our bare feet the only shoes we needed, playing a game we made up called “War”.

I grew up as one of a legion of kids living in Cedar Hills, Texas. We were also home schooled, so we were weird, and my world was made up of home and church. But in the evening we would play with the neighborhood kids, the ones with backpacks and clean shoes who waved to us on their way to and from school every day.

We recruited these kids for our game. There was my friend Robin, whose mom let her watch “The Exorcist” when she was 5; the kid we called “booger bike,” because we didn’t like him and he had a green bike; and the kid who always bought lemonade from our stand. “War” was sort of like “Capture the Flag,” but we’d capture people instead. We divided into two teams, each team with a secret base camp where we’d hold our prisoners. You could sneak in and rescue prisoners by tagging them out, but there was no way to end the game. There were never any winners.

We played that game the entire summer of 1990 and most of the winter, until our mother told us we couldn’t play it anymore. “There is a war,” she said, “the other parents thought it was insensitive.”

We had no idea about the Gulf war.

We moved the next year, to a house by a creek in Allen, Texas. We created our own little world there — my brother Zach made us our own currency, and we had houses down by the creek built of debris and discarded car parts. Our mother called us to dinner by clanging a giant wrought iron bell in the shape of the state of Texas.

As an adult, I didn’t want eight children, nor did I want to home school. I had my first child at 28, and a second one two years later. Both of them go to school with backpacks and school shoes.

When I was 5, I hid under my bed and imagined whole worlds that lived up inside the box spring, in which I’d poked a hole and would hide tiny marbles. When my daughter was 5, she was having play dates and taking piano and dance lessons. Play was something that we built into their lives, rather than the cytoplasm that contained their existence.

They also had video games. A luxury my siblings and I were denied until I went to college, and my younger brother convinced my parents to buy an XBox. He learned to read by playing Zelda; I learned by reading the Bible.

My children play on iPads. First it was animal sounds, then coloring on apps, and music and math games.

Once I took them to a creek and my daughter, then 6, told me we could be eaten by germs.

My children, like their peers, had very little unstructured playtime, and I always knew where they were. I was afraid to look away, for just one moment.

Modern mothers today are not looking away, they are barely even pausing to breathe. Even with more mothers working outside the home, moms spend twice as much time interacting with children as they did in the 1970s, according to a 2012 study. Modern motherhood is a relentless requirement to engage, educate, inform and care for your children. This intensive monitoring of their health and welfare is necessary for future success. How can we afford to look away for a moment?

Because I controlled play and activities and outings and researched apps for their tablets, my children had little unstructured time. And when they did, I played with them, something my mother rarely did, for she always had a baby with her; someone always needed something cleaned or something cooked or someone needed to learn to read. The parenting philosophy that raised me was one of benign neglect. And I still don’t think my mom knows how many times myself and my brother, who is a year younger than me, climbed onto the roof of the house, or how many times I fell off.

With my kids, I laid on the floor and invented games for them. First, I was an alligator and they were a frog, and the pillows on the floor were the rocks they had to hop on to get to safety. Other games included where I would be a sheep that they needed to get inside a pen (or under the table). My favorite was spa day. I’d lie on the couch and my children would pretend to minister potions to my aching back until I was fully “wewaxed.”

When their father and I divorced in 2017 and began a split-custody schedule, they were only 6 and 4 years old, but I lost control of part of their lives.

I couldn’t observe and be present in every moment, and as I worked more, they spent longer hours at after-school care, where playing was structured and observed, or included intense games of Gaga ball and tag on the playground. I bought a house and the playhouse in the backyard went unused.

But back in March, when schools in Iowa closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, my children, now 9 and 6, suddenly had all that unstructured time they’d lost before.

My job became twice as hard as I helped my local newspaper launch a kids’ section to fill up the empty sports pages, while also working as an editorial board member, an opinion page editor and, oh yes, I was also turning in an audio book project. Did I mention I’m a single mom?

At their dad’s house, he and his partner, a teacher, took turns caring for the kids in shifts. But at my house?

“I don’t care what you do,” I shouted to my kids on one hectic quarantine Wednesday. “Just stay alive and don’t leave the yard.”

This desperate plea, led to the creation of Box Fort City, population three (two kids, one cat; moms are tourists), which is a whole society created from discarded boxes and paint. There is a currency system, a spa for cats, a cat hotel and a rope pulley to send messages two feet from a sister box-house to a brother box-house.

My daughter also painted a giant portrait of her favorite babysitter on the wall. The playhouse has become its own retreat, filled with scraps from our giveaway pile, like old curtains and worn-out patio chair cushions.

When I play with them, it’s to take a jumping break on the trampoline, or to learn how to play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or Splatoon 2 on the Switch. I thought I’d be OK at Just Dance, but I’m not. A few times I’ve tried to force them to do one of the many crafts I’m trying to think of for the kids’ section. They aren’t interested. “We just want to make our own art,” my daughter told me.

So I watch them play their own made-up game called “Legitment”, which is played by encasing one sibling in a hammock and then swinging them around until they scream for mercy and fall out.

This doesn’t seem safe, but after being so close for months, I’ve let many things go. I have had to look away, as I hide in the room I turned into an office. I moved all the snacks where they can get them. Yesterday, I saw my kids in their underwear on the trampoline hitting each other with rubber balls. I don’t ask. And I remember my mom and dad’s favorite parenting line: “If it’s not blood or fire, leave me alone.”