A Stroller Adventure

This blog post is part of this week's Moms' 30-Minute Blog Challenge over at Steady Mom.

Last Monday was our first day of childcare swap. Our little bud Z came over to our house for a few hours after preschool.

It is about a half hour walk from preschool to our house. So I had LP and Z in a double stroller (which is surprisingly more heavy than the weight of the two kids plus the weight of the stroller). About two minutes into the walk, it started to rain. And Z didn't like the snacks I brought. And LP & I aren't wearing raincoats (at least Z is). And it starts to rain harder. And harder.

The kids were actually pretty relaxed about the cold rain coming down but I was not a happy camper and we still had a good 20 minutes of walking to go.

And so a game was born.

I started with an open question about what they could see from the stroller. That didn't inspire anything, so then I asked Z if he saw anything in the large bush up ahead.

"Lions! I see Lions"

What a delicious offer to all of our imaginations! So we spent a few blocks looking for lions and even occasionally roaring at them. Sometimes I'd ask one of the kids to describe something or point a lion out to me and sometimes Z would spontaneously point one out. This evolved into being in the jungle as we went down a block with lots of greenery reaching over the sidewalk.

It made a challenging walk home fun and certainly took my attention away from the rain and all the other things going on in my head (wondering if Z was going to be happy playing at our house, my self-criticisms of not having LP & I in raincoats and so on and so on).

This is a great "quickie" improv activity.

First, make an open-ended offer to your kiddo's imagination (like asking "what's in that bush?" or "who's hiding under that leaf?"). You can play with the scope of the question (in my story above, my more general question of "what do you see" didn't get any response from the kids but focusing on the bush inspired Z's imagination.

They will either 1) ignore you because something else is cooking up in their minds already, 2) ask the same question back to you or 3) give you an answer that opens a door to more.

Then build on it. Which can be really simple. See the lion they see and then be excited to see the lion they see. Find out what the lion is doing in the bush or move on to another bush and see if there's a whole jungle of animals on your street.

One of the wonderful things about an activity like this is that it doesn't have a specific beginning, middle and end. So you can stop and start as their (and your) interest dictates and those lions will be waiting for you to rediscover another day.

Spontaneous Play - a musing

This post is part of PhDinparenting’s Carnival of Play!
Click on over to check out all the wonderful ideas about play!

“Spontaneity need not be showy or dramatic; it can be subtle, gentle, and unassuming. It can be present in the way one thinks, walks, looks at nature, dances, or hums a tune softly in the shower.” – Adam Blatner (co-author of The Art of Play: Helping Adults Reclaim Imagination and Spontaneity)

To me the heart of play is spontaneity… spontaneity that is so simple and yet complex. Sometimes easy to name, label, put a box on it and then again…elusive. Spontaneity has many faces…it is the championship team where each individual is constantly adjusting and readjusting to make the goal, score the point, make the impossible play. It is the teacher opening a new door for learning to a student who believes he or she is a failure and cannot learn. It is the gentle teasing between friends. It is imagination allowed to flower into an active form be it planting a garden, writing a novel, or two stuffed animals having tea with a dinosaur. Or laughing while blowing a dandelion and waving goodbye to the seeds…or any of the small moments the LPs of the world give us to enjoy with them.

I think being a parent is an opportunity to reconnect with our own spontaneous nature, which is often buried in the “must-dos” of our lives as functioning adults. I love Adam Blatner’s description above of spontaneity as a way of being….and my experience is that I am happier when I am able to tap into spontaneity in the small acts of life as well as turn up the volume to teach or perform improv or more importantly, play with my beloved, my friends, family and of course, LP.

Our spontaneity allows us access to each other, fosters connections and builds community. When we’re in the zone of spontaneous play, we can meet as equals, share power and control and explore things that we otherwise never have access to. What a gift! And it can be as simple as saying “yes” to a moment.

I’ve learned so much about re-embracing spontaneity when I started improvising…it is truly like a muscle that one can “work out” to have more and more access to.

I had been teaching improvisational theater to adults for over a decade when I started to work with folks with Alzheimer’s. Their responses introduced me to completely new levels of spontaneity. Over time through this work I learned just how much quality of life can be found in simple emotional expression, in the experience of the moment even when that moment is not held onto in memory. I sometimes find myself thinking of these folks when I’m reflecting on playing with LP; parts of the role I play is the same (saying “yes” to impulses and ideas, offering possible ways to grow ideas) but of course LP’s life-stage journey is quite a different one, as every day she is a more aware, literally more conscious…and she is on fire to be more and more so. Sometimes when I watch her bombing around, chattering up a storm to herself, I long for that kind of easy immersion in spontaneity and imagination.

And then there are all the times, she wants spontaneity from me too. There are days – more than I like to admit to – when I feel tired, worn down and not, not, not interested in play. When it is hard to say “yes.” Yet, more often than not, that simple “yes” and LP’s positive response is often enough. And we are then off into play…reading books in funny voices, building steps to the sky, putting plants to bed, making friends with worms, making “squishballs” from playdough…or whatever comes next.

To end my musing, a quote from one of my favorite books about improv (really, if you were going to read just one, this is it – easy, accessible and has ideas you can try out in every day life):

“I know that improvisation has nothing to do with wit, glibness, or comic ability. A good improvisor is someone who is awake, not entirely self-focused, and moved by a desire to do something useful and give something back and who acts upon this impulse. My students wanted to know the password for joining the society of such people, to play fearlessly, and to work with greater ease. Here is the password – it is yes!….saying yes is an act of courage and optimism.” – Patricia Ryan Madson (author of Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up)

More improv games to play with your kids coming soon!