One of my proudest parenting moments this past year wasn’t even something I taught Anya. She was in pre-school, and there was always a group of people that would hang out after pick-up and play on the little playground. The kids … parallel play” is the technical term for it — little kids don’t really *play together*. They do their own thing in close physical proximity to another kid. A few bigger/older/more outgoing kids would run around the yard, while the younger/smaller/shyer kids would more or less hide. Anya was younger/smaller/shyer — which made after-school play time not a lot of fun. So I’d play with all of the kids — coordinate an activity so all of the kids were on the same task. Be the ‘finder’ in a game of hide and seek, have two dozen little kids chase me around. Sometimes I’d even have a little physics lesson — there are lots of cool real-life physics things in a playground — kinetic v/s static friction trying to walk up a slide, levers at the seesaw, momentum on a swing. Or math — the kids would pick the number I would count to in hide-and-seek, and sometimes someone would get goofy with it. Count to a million — OK, 100k, 200k, 300k, etc. Count to zero! OK, -10, -9, -8, etc. Once they got started, and after the kids got worn out some, they’d usually start playing together in smaller groups; and I had some time to chat with the other parents.

One day, I had to work during pickup time. My husband ran over to the school, picked up our daughter, and took her into the playground to hang out with her friends. In my absence, one of the other moms took my role and kicked off a game of hide and seek. Other people valued having their kids play together — a couple people told me that they’d started leading group playtime at other parks when they’re out.

I hope a few of these playtime hours are great memories for Anya when she’s older.