Parenting idea: Playing your child's game

As parents, we spend a great deal of our waking hours doing what's important FOR our child. Teaching them life skills, giving them healthy food, making sure they do homework and get exercise and plenty of sleep. Whew, big heavy stuff!

This week, after six days at home with Brady, he asked me to do something that was important TO him, something I'd never done. Play his Super Mario game with him on his Nintendo DS. Now, my initial reaction to this in my mind is, oh my gosh, I have WAY too much to do to play a game!!!

But I got to thinking about an article I read in maybe Parents magazine or Working Mother (I get so many I forget which one I read stuff in!) about how a Mom would stop what she was doing, play what her kids wanted, and in about 20 minutes they were done and went back to doing their own thing independently.

So I played his game. And to my surprise it was really, really fun. He had me try to defeat all these crazy guys with names like Bowzer and Babomb and it was so hilarious because these guys always bested me. And then Brady would show me how to do it. Here was a situation when HE could show ME what to do. He is very good at that game.

We took turns playing a matching game. Sometimes I just watched him play.

It was so fun and I could see he loved I was focusing on what he thought was important. In turn, that shows that I think he and what he enjoys are important. And dang if that article wasn't right! In 20-30 minutes he didn't mind if I got up and did my own thing. We'd had a fun time interacting, laughing, talking, and then we could go our own way for awhile.

So if there's something your child loves to do, I'll bet they'd be pleasantly surprised if you went and did it with them. And I'll bet you would be too :)