Oct 27 2006
Child’s Play
Children are both the most fascinating and the most boring entities on earth. What makes them interesting is actually part of what makes them so boring.
Kids can be entranced. It’s fun to watch a child be literally wide-eyed with wonder at something. Can you be entranced? I can’t recall the last time I was entranced. Dumbfounded, maybe, but entranced? Nope.
Children are so entranced they want to share. How can you not see what they see? How can you NOT be enthralled? They tug on your clothes, cry Look-look-look-look! LOOK AT THIS!
Even more fun (Nail-In-The-Eye FUN) is when they want you to listen to something. They are utterly charmed by the saccharine tones of a doll or the roly-poly-drolly voice of a stuffed animal. A toy’s ability to “Keep them entertained for HOURS†can be a blessing and a curse.
Listen! Listen-listen-listen! A child’s attention span is so short that it can hear the same thing over and over again because it really is new each time; they’ve already forgotten the last time they heard it. Which is why children can be so boring – you may enjoy their fascination, but your eyes are glazing over because your brain has collapsed upon itself. Or not. Maybe this only happens to me.
It might scare everyone around you, but wouldn’t it be fun to be a kid again?
You could:
- Suck on a Jolly Rancher and then run up to people asking, “What color is my tongue?”
- Fidget and squirm.
- Exclaim, “I’m tired!” and just curl over like a shrimp on the floor using your jacket as a “blankie”
- Blow bubbles into your coffee using the plastic stirrer straw
- Skip down the hallway
- Respond with, “NO! You can’t make me!”
- Ask, “Are we there yet?” (Try this during a PowerPoint-intensive meeting)
- Tear out the centers of the dinner bread, wad them into balls and toss it at other diners when they aren’t looking.
- Laugh out loud.
- Enjoy the moment.
- Play.
Come-on-come-on-come-on! We’ll take turns pushing each other on the swing…higher! Higher! HIGHER!
Let’s go outside…Let’s go outside and play!
Oh yeah…I want to do this one…
Ask, “Are we there yet?†(Try this during a PowerPoint-intensive meeting)
even though I do a fair job of figeting & squirming during meetings anyway…I always forget how much I hate those things until I’m sitting in one.
Hi, Jill! Thanks for stopping by and reminding me of this post. I see you teach preschool – you know WAY more about children than I do!