Amy Tan Reflection

Watch this video presentation by Amy Tan at the TED conference and then read and comment on my reflection below.

The most complete answers are in the imagination. I interact more with my sons when I enter into their worlds. I live with them when I play with them. To play requires me to know who they are and where they are right now as a six year-old and a nine year-old boy. I have to listen to them and not just manage their behavior and lives. I have to stop seeing myself in them and enable their own true spirit to emerge. I have to love them enough to let them try and fail and avoid micromanaging every word and deed, however unpalatable to my 40 year-old brain.

That being said, how do I know how much to play with them and how much to parent them? Where is the line between playmate and papi? I know they see my toys as my laptop. Zachary told me yesterday at dinner, “Dad, your laptop is your toy.” I replied “What are some of Dad’s other toys? The boys immediately thought of the laptop. They couldn’t come up with anything else until I prompted them. Baseball mitt. Guitar. Fishing pole. “Oh yeah, Dad,” the realization finally hit Zack. It finally hit me, too. How much do I allow myself to play and show myself as one who plays (a player?!) How do I play? What is play? Isn’t play life? If play is a child’s work, then do I never play when I work. Can work be play? Should it be play? What’s the difference between work and play? What about kids in Pakistan who stitch soccer balls for x number of hours a day? Preserving childhood. Protecting childhood. The MEAP robbing our children of the ability to play in their school day, to effectively be kids which means to play. Play is always fun or it wouldn’t be play, right? Play is by definition fun or we wouldn’t do it. If it’s not fun we stop doing it and find something else to play. What children DO should be PLAY or like play, right? What is play theory. Play therapy? Invention. Imagination. Amy Tan says the most complete answers are in the imagination. Is play our highest and purest form of being? “If you want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, be as the little child.”