Learning to Play

As I’ve said a couple of times, the Wii has been great for getting us playing together.

The truth is, I am the one who needs the most help with this. I am good at getting things done, planning, working, and doing. But I am not a great player. I get restless, and I feel I should be doing something else. The Waldorf notion that adults lose their ability to play in a child-like way really rings true for me.

Something about the Wii draws me in, and I sit and watch the girls, or I play too, or I even — gasp — play by myself.

So I have been thinking about play lately.

I have always thought that my husband and I are good models for our children because we have work that we enjoy and have a fair amount of control over. We read and do interesting things. We continue to learn and study. These are all great things, of course.

But I have been noticing that my husband is an especially good model of how a person can continue to play as an adult. In addition to being a programmer, he is a musician. He has been working on a long piece of music for over a year now with a friend, most of it online, but he has traveled to NYC and his friend J. has traveled here for them to work on it and record. They are hoping to complete the work and probably offer it for sale online.

Why do they do this? They have no illusions about becoming rock stars, or making a lot of money. They do it for fun. They work hard at it, but they do it for fun.

This week Eggmaster has been off work, and with some of his new Christmas presents he has been writing and recording some new tracks as well. Not necessarily for the big project, just for fun.

I am very happy that our children have this model as well. That they can pursue an interest — and work hard at it — just for fun. Work (a job) can be fun, and fun can involve a lot of effort and still be fun. You can create just for the sake of creating.

I had been thinking of all this even before Jove had her series of posts on creativity and art. I need to go listen to that Lynda Barry podcast.

All hail Lynda Barry!

Go read this thread on play

Probably everyone who looks at my blog visits Patience at Homespun, but just in case I must urge you to go read the thoughts on play that she has been developing in a couple of posts, and then the interesting comments left by other parents.

Susan offered that kind of comment that is not so much new but somehow phrased in a way that brings a familiar idea to you with new interest, excitement, and depth. A litte excerpt:

Most of the toys today are too finely detailed for older children to find them useful as aids for their quite advanced imaginations . . .

So much of the play of older children is completely internal. They are engaged in it almost all of the time, even when we adults do not recognize it.

[I had not visited Susan’s blog before, but she is a Catholic homeschooling knitter — what’s not to love?]

It feels like a real discussion — I’m always grateful to generous, highly thoughtful bloggers, like Patience, who are willing to develop their thinking in their postings rather than presenting it as finished dogma. We have the chance to join in and think things through, learn, and develop our own thoughts that way.

And yes, I am crazy-busy preparing for upcoming travel, so I am meta-blogging rather than really writing!