Last time we met, Gentle Reader, I provided Part 1 of my First Year Fatherhood Wisdom™, which covered a variety of topics. Today I’ll be offering up Part 2 of said Proprietary Wisdom which, if I had to give it a subtitle, would be An Extended Meditation on Playtime.
Kid in Play
To be sure, feeding, changing, and bargaining in exchange for sleep are going to be where a significant amount of your life is spent in the first year of parenthood. But as your Young Monarch gets on in months, you’ll be devoting increasing amounts of time to the nebulous activity that psychologists and other people who enjoy being paid to write about children have dubbed “Play.” This term is a delightfully cruel joke. Because said writers will introduce the term “Play”–by all accounts a word that invokes a sense of universal joy and fun–and then proceed to talk about how gravely important Play is for babies and how doing it not enough or with the wrong type of toys or not on their stomach or with not enough enthusiasm or not enough boundaries or too many boundaries will irreparably damage your baby’s development. I’m not sure about you, but when I think of fun, I definitely think of something whose consequences include steering an unwitting family member into a life of deviancy and crime. But as irksome as it is, it seems that the experts are right and that Playtime is quite important for babies: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into playtime,” as Fitzgerald once wrote I’m pretty sure. So, some practical tips on Playtime.
All Hail Screens
It is almost universally acknowledged that screens will irreparably damage a child’s fragile psyche and should be avoided at all costs. The World Health Organization warns against giving children under 1 any screen time at all. The one exception to all of these guidelines–though it isn’t explicitly stated–is your phone. I’m on my phone all the time, bathed in its warm, comforting LED glow, and it’s essential that I allow my son to benefit from the same digital brain massage. In fact, playtime is really just an opportunity for you to show your child your phone surrounded by a bunch of other toys and games that underscore how much less fun they are than your phone. But, and this is critical, do not give them your phone to play with. You must look at it yourself–focused and engrossed in some important task, maybe texting a funny cat GIF or checking the Instagram account of someone who wouldn’t know if you lived or died–then put your phone away, move it, hide it, and repeat this process over and over. Children must learn to worship the glowing rectangle. But like any mighty deity, it must be aloof and elusive. Then, when my son turns three and I finally buy him a phone, he’ll approach it with the appropriate amount of awe and reverence.
The Toy with a Thousand Faces
Since you need toys at least as a foil for your phone, they might as well be good ones. And the easiest (and cheapest) way to amp up your child’s toys is to give them different personas. My son has a Very Hungry Caterpillar stuffed animal. If we had kept it as-is, the Caterpillar would have a fairly limited appeal as a toy. Sure, he’s hungry and he has a bell that jingles and jangles, but how interested is that going to keep your child? Marginally. But by assigning him the persona of a gruff-voiced compulsive gambler, I’ve exponentially increased the number of playtimes the Very Hungry Caterpillar can participate in as he recounts his complex and rocky personal history. For instance, the Very Hungry Caterpillar (VHCP) prefers Atlantic City to Monte Carlo because he is no longer legally welcome in the latter. The VHCP’s gambling habits also allow us to combine him with other toys to create richer play scenarios. When we took one of my son’s stacking rings and placed it on the VHCP, it came to light that the VHCP had purchased the ring with his craps winnings, was planning to get engaged, and that he had been married previously but we can never speak of it. The VHCP’s persona even influenced his appeal as a travel toy: we took him with us on a trip to Ohio expressly because we would be passing by the Jack Thistledown Racino (a combination racetrack/casino, perhaps one of the greatest portmanteaus of our time) and the VHCP was interested in checking it out.
However, when introducing toy personas, it’s important to include foes as well as friends. As Joseph Campbell tells us, the hero’s journey must include a road of trials. For instance, my son has a job as a water scientist. In the bath, it’s his responsibility to study water–whether it is indeed wet and how big of splashies can be made from it. My son also has a bath toy that is a monkey piloting an orange-and-yellow submarine. At first, we were under the impression that the Monkey Submarine was a deep sea researcher who had been sent to help my son conduct his research. However, deception! The Monkey Submarine was actually a rival researcher who had come to disrupt my son’s work and to steal his findings. Now my son has learned to approach the Monkey Submarine with professional courtesy but to grab him by the propeller and throw him around if he gets out of line–a skill that will prove invaluable in my son’s future places of employment.
But if all of this persona-creation sounds exhausting, fear not. You don’t need to create all of this ex nihilo. Feel free to co-opt existing personas–characters from your favorite movie or even historical figures. One of my son’s other bath toys is a purple octopus that sounds suspiciously like Jimmy Carter and is always talking about brokering peace talks in the Middle East and the difficulties of mitigating an energy crisis, as well selling my son on the important work being done by Habitat for Humanity.
But the Soul Still Burns
Contrary to what many villains in action movies tell you, Playtime is not over; it is never over. Hopefully, these tips will help give you the endurance to keep playing. If not, there are a variety of alternative options that may be viable for you. Remote work and teleconferencing are becoming incredibly popular in the workplace, and it stands to reason that this trend will be reflected in the home as well. Talk to your child about the possibility of playing with them via video conferencing software so that you can remain in bed. Alternatively, you might seek out one of the many amphetamine providers (colloquially referred to as “drug dealers”) whose products have been known to increase energy levels and reduce the need for sleep.
pygmanlion 