Entertaining my child? He does that himself’
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Hello, Joan is not an animation team for bored children. Her son must be really sick if she wants to play quartets with him.
While waiting in the schoolyard, I get into a conversation with Fien’s mother, a classmate of Callum’s. Out of courtesy I inquire about her plans for the May holidays. And you will be presented with a daytime activity that many an animation team would be jealous of. They go to the movie museum and Nemo. She arranged a DJ workshop. She plans to teach Fien how to cook pasta. The two of them participate in the four-day swimming, have booked two mother-daughter tennis clinics and of course the usual program: painting, crafts and baking cookies. And we? Also such fun plans?
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Orientate
Honestly, I haven’t thought about it for a second. When I think of two weeks off, I mainly think of ultimate rest. Sleep in a bit, start the day quietly and then see at what times I can still work. With a bit of luck the weather will be nice and Callum will be playing outside. When it rains heavily, we go to the cinema once, but I don’t even know if there’s anything on. So I’ll stick with it: “We’re still orienting ourselves.” In any case, that sounds a lot better than: “I have nothing planned.”
Mother gene
Although it comes down to that. I’m not much of an entertainment machine. I miss the motherly virtue that makes you overjoyed after an afternoon of playing or playing quartets with your offspring. Or turn blankets and sheets into an exciting cabin. I never had that mother gene. Not even when Callum was younger. I loved watching him stack a tower of blocks with his little fists. But then from the couch with an espresso.
And it has always been that way, even now that he is seven. I don’t feel called to climb on a climbing frame, grit in sandboxes or take part in water fights. At most I encourage and happily cater lemonade and cookies. In the summer I would love to blow up a swimming pool, fill it with buckets of lukewarm water and pump up the entire collection of swimming equipment, but that’s it.
Of the Xbox, I only know how it turns on, but I have no idea how to move a soccer figure forward, let alone shoot a ball, so the whole Fifa18 is not for me. And I lack the patience to spend hours playing Mousetrap, Leaning Tower or Bunny Hop. If a tower collapses I’m done with it immediately and I get annoyed pretty easily if I don’t win. And please don’t talk about assembling Lego sets, Callum’s great passion.
Lego
Callum loves Lego Ninjago. He has been tinkering with the most complicated structures since he was five. He meticulously studies instructions for use that the average Ikea customer would call higher mathematics. Occasionally he wishes for help or encouragement. If only because some priegelstones are really difficult to clamp or he just can’t find that one red block.
Do I want to search? Want to assemble a plane? Make the eagle’s wings? I immediately pass such a task on to my friend, with the very misogynistic message ‘mothers can’t build’. Before I get a feminist avalanche over me: I’m raising Callum in a very gender-neutral way. He learned at a young age that women are equal to men and we neatly divide all household chores here in the house, regardless of gender. But when it comes to Lego, this politically incorrect statement just suits me personally.
Oddly enough, I do have angelic patience when it comes to cuddling. Cuddling in bed with Callum, taking a bath together and frolicking on the couch. I also like to go with him when he has to play football. I don’t skip training, cheer every ball contact and don’t miss anything, not even that away game at a quarter past eight in the morning. And reading is fun for me. Both before going to sleep or on the couch, when we just got out of the library.
Nothing is more fun than re-reading my favorite childhood books and enthusing my child for language. But that’s where parent participation ends. To the dismay of my son, who firmly believes in the creed sharing together, playing together. After one of those Saturday mornings, when I spent an hour watching a horde of puppies and a ball in the pouring rain, Callum can simply ask what we’re going to do when we get home. Well, I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I’m going to have a coffee and read the paper, I guess. Or simply crush candy on the couch. In any case, I switch myself off for the rest of the day. Alone with my own thoughts. And that is best if he builds Lego in his play corner or sorts Pokémon pictures by strength.
Exception
The only exception I make is when Callum is sick. A few works ago he had a high fever, headache and sore throat and couldn’t get a bite down his throat. Very touching and broke my heart. I didn’t know how fast I had to pull out the whole arsenal of family games and Beyblades (kind of spinning tops, google it). I was overjoyed to distract him with 45 games of Bullying and Beyblade battles. But man, was I glad when he was better and could play outside again with the boys from the neighborhood.
That’s what I prefer to see, a child who is playing outside with friends and who can enjoy himself. Of course that doesn’t happen every day. Especially when his twelve-year-old stepsister is here, I often hear the words ‘I’m bored’ echoing around. Fine, nothing wrong with that. I have done many times in the past. Scientific research shows that boredom is fantastic for creativity. Children need more time to process stimuli than adults. So if your child is bored or finds everything boring, that seems to be very helpful. Boring means rest and charging time for the brain.
Entertain yourself
If you continuously entertain your child or provide ideas for something to play with, the brain is not stimulated enough and therefore lazy, experts say. Children don’t learn to enjoy themselves that way. Peter Gray, professor of psychology at Boston College, makes it even bolder. According to him, parents who constantly play along when a boyfriend comes over should not be surprised if their child becomes narcissistic. He states in his book Free to learn that parents should allow their children to muddle through on their own. By holding back, you give them the opportunity to develop their empathy. They know that boyfriends can just drop out if no parent intervenes, so they are automatically more social.
I also don’t remember my mom having marathon jumping rope or marble sessions with me or coming over to play with the Barbies. Nor the mothers of my girlfriends. I don’t know what they did either. Household? Drinking coffee? In my memory my mother was always on the tennis court, but I could be wrong.
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Busy with their child all day
Apparently the mothers in my area are all very productive. Especially those who only have one child spend all day trying to please their child. The mothers of Callum’s boyfriend Bas feel free to go to the woods with four boys at the same time to set out a treasure hunt. Just because it’s Wednesday afternoon. I should not think about it.
Or does it just seem that all those mothers play along all day? When I ask the mothers of Callum’s soccer team about it, it turns out that they don’t act as an animation team either. In fact, Lucie doesn’t do anything at all. “Are you crazy, a board game at most once a year, at Christmas. He also enjoys himself with his iPad or Playmobil.” Lian hates the Playstation that her son uses every day. “All those horrible car racing games. I’m not really going to play a game with him. To compensate, I sit next to him on the couch when he plays games, Facebooks and texts with friends. He also finds it very cozy.” And Fatima, mother of four sons and a daughter, is even more resolute: “No, they just play games together; enough brothers, I always say. I play as a referee at home so often, I think that is enough.”
The more I ask, the more honest answers I get. My colleague Sophie confesses that she sometimes takes a long time looking for the finger paint in the hope that the children have long since forgotten what they were going to do.
Quality timing
Strengthened by these stories (but also with a little guilt, because it’s really bad that my son has to get sick before I want to quality time with him), I decide to do something with him during the May holidays. And so it is that after two weeks in the schoolyard I consciously visit Fien’s mother. I can proudly tell her that I went miniature golfing with Callum, made popcorn (microwave, but still) with him once, and also went to see Nemo. The fact that Callum then went off like a hare for peers with whom he crawled into the bubble machine, on which I could spend the afternoon on a bench on my iPhone, is a detail that I wisely keep silent.
This article was previously published in Kek Mama.
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