Wanna Play?

Shockingly, I had never thought about "playing" — analyzing, strategizing or even theorizing about it — until very recently when I actually had a kid (if I had, you would definitely have stopped talking to me and pretended not to know me if you ran into me at Starbucks). But over the past few weeks, I've started wondering, How does one "play"? How does it work? What should you do? What should your kid do? And, most confounding: What is my role in my child's "play" experience? (Yes, that last question was phrased rather douche-ily. I'm aware).

To sum it up, I'm basically wondering what I'm supposed to do (if anything) while my kid plays. My natural instinct is to point to a bunch of toys, press a button to get the music going, then let Leo go at it and play with what he wants, when he wants, while I check my email and tell myself that teaching him to play independently is actually super important to his development. This isn't to say that I NEVER play "with" him — we do stuff together all the time, especially reading books, which I totally adore because I'm a nerd like that, and a lot of times I'm down on the ground with him, "supervising" his play. But I've noticed I'm *not* the mom who is constantly coming up with ideas for what he can play with or how he can play. I just usually kind of set him loose and let him go wild. In Bringing up Bebe, Pamela Druckerman talks about "narrated play" (a term I think she may have coined) and pokes fun at moms on the playground who are constantly narrating their kids' actions. I don't think there's any need to make fun of these moms — after all, they're just trying to be good parents, and who knows, maybe their kids are all going to go to Harvard and win Grammy's and cure cancer because their moms cheered while they scooted down the slide, and all the other moms were texting. But is this narrated play good for our kids? Preferable? Not? I have no idea. I'm usually just trying to keep Leo from swallowing something or falling on his head, but I guess that'll change as he gets older. And then my main job will be intervening when he tries to bite that little girl with pigtails.

In all seriousness: is there a preferred way to play? How much do you encourage your kids to play by themselves — to establish independence and stimulate their imaginations — and how much do you jump into the fray to play with them? And how often do you steer them towards the toys you yourself find more interesting (or is that just me?!)

PHOTO CAPTION: View from the top of Twin Peaks. The culmination of a great walk up the hills and stairs of SF. And yes, the-sky-really-was-that-blue-it's-not-just-Instagram.