Alivia and Rayna just came over, and amidst the squeals of excitement and announcements…
Sylvia: (pointing outdoors at her swing that we hung out on the tree yesterday) “My swing! Rayna, my swing!”
Rayna: (pointing at her dad who was walking past the swing) “My daddy, Sylvia. Dat’s my daddy.”
Coats and backpacks were removed. The big kids turned to the little ones and said, “Let’s play house!”
“House!! House!!!” shouted the little girls.
“You can be the babies,” announced the big kids.
“Babies, BABIES!” delighted the little girls.
Four kids traipsed in a line out of the living room and back into the sun room where I imagine they’ll amuse themselves (with only minor problems) at playing house.
This has become a somewhat ritualized game here at our house this month. As you might expect, Alivia is the mom (the little girls are often heard calling out, “Mama! Mama!!”…but not for me!). Andrew’s the dad. And Sylvia and Rayna are the babies.
They remove all the cushions from the love seat and sofa and build a fort in the sun room. Alivia just said, “Andrew, can you please keep the babies occupied while I make the house?”
Despite the fact that the “parents” give a lot of directions (orders), the “babies” seem to enjoy the game immensely. My rules are: 1) Safety first and 2) Everyone needs to stay happy. Other than that, this “house play” has given me some fabulous time to, say write a blog post while the kids are happy and engaged and active.
Plus, I get to marvel at the fact that Sylvia is able to happily play without my intervention for long stretches of time. Thank you, Alivia!
How do you define/explain “safety first”? My experience has been that safety is in the eye of the beholder – Egon sees nothing wrong with riding his scooter into the street without looking, while I, on the other hand, find that unsafe. On the other hand, I would have told you that a serving spoon was a fairly innocuous object, but when deployed by an 11-year-old boy in the service of play, can land one in the emergency room.
Sigh.
You know, Karen, it’s clear that when kids play together, people are just going to get bumped and cut and crashed into and hurt. And I’m really OK with that as long as the damage is mild:)
So my use of my “safety first” rule is to ask the big kids to repeat it after me. And then when I walk in the room and there’s mad chaos that looks a little dangerous, I can stand at the door, hold my hand high over my head like the statue of liberty, and proclaim, “Remember kids, Safety First!” And then I give a couple examples of ways they might employ that directive and then walk away, hoping that they get the message:)
And keep a good stock of bandaids on hand!