The epiphany came mid-pillow fight.
I’d just let my 6-year-old daughter whack me and as I fell to the ground, mimicking a body blow worthy of any GLOW episode, I realized I hadn’t been playing enough with my kids.
Somewhere between Christmas and New Year’s, when my husband and I weren’t scrambling to meet deadlines while caring for our older daughter and her 15-month-old sister, we found ourselves relaxed enough to regularly talk in ridiculous voices, pretend we live in a universe run by unicorns, and accept invitations to tickle fights. The toddler screamed with delight at the antics. The 6-year-old went to bed happy and exhausted.
When I told her that I’d decided to make playing more one of my family goals for 2021, she jumped up and down, then looked at me and said: “Mama, more play equals more fun, which equals more joy, which equals more happiness, which equals more love, which is everything.”
Her mantra was the perfect counterweight to the soul-crushing effect of the coronavirus pandemic, which requires adults to be serious and risk-minded. After all, I want more play in my life, too.
I felt inspired and motivated until the first Monday after the holidays, when my old pandemic routine of juggling work, kids, and months of chronic stress dwarfed me like a tidal wave.
Regardless of whether you’re a parent, this cycle may seem familiar. Claw your way out of the COVID-19 darkness and find hope through a new activity or connection, but then events like an attempted coup or a pandemic surge make it harder to rediscover that sense of joy as the days march on. Your phone or the internet becomes a crutch in unhelpful ways, because it’s easier to scroll than ask for help or practice coping skills (and often, these days, what people need is fundamental change at the societal level). All of that leaves you wondering how you’ll ever make it through these next few depressing months.
“Play for me is any joyful act where you forget about time.”
To help clear my path forward, I reached out to Jeff Harry, a positive psychology play consultant and coach, for advice. I already know that play is good for child development and parental bonding, and that adults benefit from play because it can build social connections and reduce stress. I wanted clarity on why, when presented with opportunities to play, I passed them up to scroll social media. I also needed guidance on what exactly counts as play.
Harry began our conversation with a simple definition: “Play for me is any joyful act where you forget about time.” It also has no purpose or result.
Then Harry laid out strategies for how I could put more play in my everyday life.
Get into a “play mindset”
Even though I was excited to start living more playfully, I explained to Harry that once I returned from work after the holidays and had momentary breaks from the chaos, I just felt exhausted, and in no mood to be playful.
Instead, given a few minutes to do something fun or joyful, I checked my phone, email or social media, probably subconsciously in search of a dopamine hit, or maybe because it felt productive to add to my grocery list or respond to a text message. On the day of the attempted coup at the Capitol, I scrolled for updates as part of my job but also as a concerned citizen.
Harry, who I spoke to before Wednesday’s events, knew exactly why play wasn’t coming easy.
“You can’t play when you’re … in an anxiety ridden state,” he said, adding that the same is true if you’re angry or tired. The first step toward feeling playful is to do something calming and soothing.
Then try letting your imagination guide you. Sometimes that means ignoring your inner critic, said Harry. That’s the one dismissing your ideas as far-flung, impractical, or unserious. Don’t worry about ticking items off your to-do list or spending time on an activity with no immediate payoff. If you have a child, follow their lead or tap into your own imagination instead of taking the role of supervisor, which as any parent knows isn’t much fun. Instead, give yourself permission to be silly, ridiculous, or absurd.
Allow yourself to become bored
It may sound counter-intuitive, but Harry helped me understand that one critical ingredient for play is boredom. Phone and internet use aren’t necessarily the enemy of play, but they can impede the imagination by distracting the mind with messages that keep you focused on “consuming over creating and not being enough.”
When a spin through Instagram and TikTok is bringing you genuine happiness, keep doing that while staying aware of any shifts in your mood. But if you’re doomscrolling or binge watching and being inundated with images and information with no real benefit, it’s time to turn off the internet and quiet the mind. If you’d taken a break to calm feelings of anxiety, the next step is boredom.
Harry also recommended periods of boredom as an exercise in strengthening the ability to hear your intuition and inner child. Even five to 10 minutes of this practice, which is all I have time for between 6:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., can make a difference.
Figure out what types of play you love
Getting into a play mindset and cultivating boredom can open the door to your inner child, but Harry also suggested identifying the curiosities and passions you most associate with joyful moments. You can do this on your own or enlist a small group of friends willing to share when they’ve observed you “most playful, most alive, most creative, and most engaged.” This information can help you pinpoint activities or behavior to incorporate into your daily routine.
Harry also said to let go of ideas about the wrong or right way to play and to broaden that definition, which I welcomed as someone who always felt like adult play was about puzzles, board games, and quiz nights.
I quickly learned that play doesn’t need to be elaborate or pre-planned to be effective.
Before talking to Harry, I’d made my own list of things that brought me joy, many of which could be done in short intervals of time. It included dance parties, treadmill dancing, playing soccer, reading poetry, and watching my favorite musical performances (like this one of Prince playing an unforgettable cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps). Tickle and pillow fights with my daughter also made the list. Harry, a soccer player himself, recommended a futsal ball for dribbling around the house and playing games with my husband and kids.
After talking with him, I realized my own childhood penchant for silliness and absurdity were simple forms of playfulness that I could turn to throughout the day. When my daughter put on a pair of oversized costume glasses at the dinner table and declared, “Mr. Meow at your service!” I responded by pretending I was a cat emperor. It made no sense, but it made us laugh.
The next day, I invited her to do a “happy” dance with me, which basically looks like a chicken shaking its behind. On a walk she asked what game we should play, and instead of letting out a deep sigh of exhaustion, I challenged her to a “dark and foggy night” storytelling game. She proceeded to slay several imaginary creatures with a tree branch she found on the ground.
I quickly learned that play doesn’t need to be elaborate or pre-planned to be effective.
Practice self-compassion
Harry also urged me to practice self-compassion in the moments when I truly don’t feel like playing with my daughter, or for my own sake. He warned that using shame as a tool to change my own behavior — “you’re a bad parent for not playing babies today!” — won’t serve me well. It’s better to acknowledge a bad mood, fatigue, or stress than to force play or become upset.
“If you want to get that energy to play, it comes from the compassion you’re giving yourself,” said Harry.
It may also help that, in order to keep myself accountable, I’ve promised the entire family their own deluxe ice cream sundae if I can stick with the goal I set for myself.
I’m looking forward to using Harry’s insights to play more, but ten months into the pandemic, I fully understand that there’s no easy answer or single solution when the scaffolding we’ve built starts to wobble or fall apart. I’ll probably develop a nice streak of playing every day, or at least being open to it, but I’ll hit a wall eventually. That’s when I’ll take a few deep breaths, repeat my daughter’s mantra, and keep trying again.
“All you need to do is to give yourself permission to play, allow yourself 20 seconds to be your weird, nerdy, authentic true self, and something magical that may change your life could come from it,” Harry later wrote in a follow-up email. “That is the power of play.”