I’ve been thinking back on the devotional that I wrote for my church last October (See The Importance of Play: Pt. 1). I wrote about the need for play in order to learn and grow. Now, less than a year later, children have been sent home from school, away from their playmates, and told to learn remotely. Meanwhile, parents are trying to work from home. What does this mean? Screen time, screen time, and more screen time.

I can tell you firsthand that working and teaching from home is mentally exhausting, and when I finally get to ‘clock out,’ I just want to turn my brain off. But, there’s my daughter to think about. She misses her friends and the playtime she had at recess so much. So what could we do that didn’t require thinking, but still involved a level of play? How could I help her to learn remotely without entering an online classroom? What could we do to reduce the anxieties caused by this pandemic? We’d go to various parks and trails where I would walk the dogs and she would ride her bike or hoverboard. We would paint on the back porch or color in her coloring books (both very good activities for calming the nerves). And we played every board game in the house, three times over. As enjoyable as those activities are, we needed more (I mean really, it’s been 88 days since the first stay-at-home order was issued!).

I started to think about the activities that I love to play and that also reduce stress, and hoped that my daughter would enjoy them, too. I love puzzles, so I bought myself a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, and a few smaller puzzles for her to work on beside me. She would have me time her as she tried to beat her own puzzle completion time over and over. I finished my puzzle within a weekend. Ok, what’s next?

I chose the first activity and she chose the second. She has been really into LEGOs lately (thanks to her juvenescent 53-year old uncle who plays with them regularly and sent her a bunch!), so I decided to take my own advice to act like a child and nurture my own imagination, and give them a try. I bought myself the Friends LEGO set of Central Perk, and I loved building it! I did not play with LEGOs much as a child, so I didn’t understand the draw. I mean there’s an entire LEGOLAND and a LEGO Masters show and LEGO Movies! But now that I’ve pieced a set together, I totally get it. For one thing, I love the show Friends. Secondly, I love working with my hands, piecing things together, fixing things, and figuring out how things work. Building a Friends LEGO set just made sense. After completing it, my daughter and I sat down and watched all 10 seasons of Friends together. While we watched, she played with the LEGOs, setting up the Friends in positions similar to where they were in the show’s scenes. This became our nightly ritual for several weeks.

Something that I spent a lot of time playing with as a child was a train set. That was a fun hobby that really is similar to puzzles and LEGOs; not only was I piecing something together, but the more I worked on them, the more I felt I was in them, like a part of the scene. It’s kind of like how Mister Rogers’ trolley would magically transport you to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Yes, I think my daughter and I will just have to build a set together.

This time at home has increased the level of importance of play even more. The kids have really been thrown for a loop, no matter how resilient their coping skills seem to be. Think about how stressed you’ve been during this pandemic and then fit all of that into a pint-sized version of yourself. Use this time to act like a child and be the best playmate your child could ever imagine.