Finding Ways to Have Fun with Your Kids
STORY BY Heather Kirk-Davidoff ILLUSTRATION BY Melissa Carstensen
When our twin sons left home to attend college last year, our house felt awfully quiet. My chatty 
daughter did her best to fill in the space left by her brothers, but family dinners had too many awkward silences. By the end of the second week I’d had it. “Let’s put on a show!” I declared.
The following month, the three of us staged a scene from Macbeth on our back porch. “Double, double, toil and trouble,” we chanted as we circled around the little plastic cauldron I use for Halloween candy. Over the previous weeks, we had each struggled to memorize our lines for the short scene, laughing together about Shakespeare’s wild imagery. After the performance on the deck, my husband told me the costumes had been a “bridge too far” for him. But even he admits that he had fun with our little drama. Playing together helped us to know that we were still a family — even with a reduced cast of characters.
I haven’t always loved playing with my kids, to tell the truth. There’s only so much peek-a-boo a rational adult can stand. I just couldn’t get into World of Warcraft or Magic the Gathering. But at every age, as my kids grew, I was able to find at least one activity that we could enjoy together.
It started with the jog stroller. My twins were born in December in Boston, and we spent most of the first few months of their lives indoors. During that time, I was either taking care of the infants or taking care of myself — I couldn’t do both. Then, in March, my mother-in-law gave me a twin jog stroller for my birthday. The snow had started to melt, and with the sidewalks cleared, I discovered something my babies and I both enjoyed. Our long walks became short jogs and then longer runs. By the time we got home from these excursions, all three of us were smiling.
That experience helped me to realize early on that if I was going to survive parenthood, it would have to be as much fun for me as for my kids. And in order for me to have fun with them, I was going to have to stop trying to be a grown-up all the time and start goofing off.
So when my daughter used to take out all her stuffed animals and hold a concert, I gave voice to one of the bands. Her make believe ensemble was called “Black and White” and it featured a zebra, a Dalmatian and a Holstein cow. Their hit song, not surprisingly, was “Love is not Black and White.”
My sons got interested in politics when they were in third grade, a presidential election year. I decided to run for president of our household. I hung campaign posters around the house and had the boys hold the video camera as I made campaign ads. My slogan was “Mom is FUN” (which stood for Food, clean Underwear and New adventures). I won the election — but then, I ran unopposed.
My kids got older. How do you have fun with a teenager? The stuff I did to make them laugh when they were little became deeply embarrassing to them. We could still laugh together in a dark movie theater, but most of their humor involved in-jokes with their friends.
Maybe I should have let them be. Maybe I should have gone back to having fun with other grown-ups. But I had spent so many years nurturing my inner goofball that I just couldn’t go back. My church youth group became my outlet. We started off playing a game as an ice-breaker at the start of a meeting but soon those games expanded to consume at least half of our time together. I found all sorts of clever games online, but the kids had the most fun with hide and seek in a dark church or capture the flag outside on a warm spring evening.
Our youth group has helped me to keep the faith about play. It is possible for adults and kids to have fun together, and you don’t have to buy a day at the paintball range to do it. When kids are little they challenge us to join in with their playtime, but when kids grow up they may need us to invite them to join in.
Last fall, the youth group put together a not-very-scary haunted house for the younger kids of our church. Everyone had fun touching peeled grape “eye balls” and cold spaghetti “intestines” but for me, the best part came afterwards. One of the adult leaders suggested that the kids join them in a game of hide and seek. The kids were game, though some of the younger ones wanted their parents to hide with them. The rest of the adults decided they might as well join in too. As a result, people ranging from age 4 to 50-something spent most of an hour huddled behind tables and hidden in closets, giggling in the dark together. It was pretty close to my idea of heaven.
Heather Kirk-Davidoff is the enabling minister of the Kittamaqundi Community Church in Columbia. She and her husband, Dan, are the parents of three biological children and an adult foster daughter.
