Young Imaginations at Work
By Allan Olson
What would it be like to once again have an imagination that really runs wild and free? Only a child is really aware of what that is like.
My kids are pretty good at letting their imaginations run wild.
One day, my three youngest were playing their version of hide-and-go-seek. It seldom includes hiding, and if they do hide, they give away their location quickly.
Alivia was it, and had to find Marcus and Abigail. “One, three, five, seven, eight . . . not or ready, here I come,” she said.
Then she starts out on her mission to find the other two. This usually isn’t a hard task, since they are either still looking for a place to hide or hiding together, and likely laughing the entire time.
Those three are usually pretty good about finding games to play.
Another of their favorites is a playing house.
Usually, Marcus is the dad, Abigail is sometimes the mom and other days the daughter, and Alivia usually plays the role of the family pet – a little puppy.
This can be a confusing situation to walk into if you are not aware of what is going on.
“Dad!” Abigail will say.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m not talking to you,” she says. “I’m talking to Marcus. We’re playing house.”
“Sorry,” I reply, and then get out of their way.
I can’t keep up with all the different roles they play in a week’s or sometimes even a day’s time. It really is crazy to see how fast time goes by.
This week, the youngest ones have had to work harder at using their imaginations for entertainment. With the majority of their toys packed away for our move this weekend, we started taking the rooms apart as well.
The first room to be tackled was the boys’ room. Washing walls, vacuuming, throwing more stuff away, and taking their bunk bed apart. With the mattresses on the floor and the room finished, we threw the blankets on the beds and got ready to leave.
“Do you remember which bed was whose?” my wife asked as we left the room.
��No,” I said. “They will figure it out.”
Well, a few minutes later, Marcus was doing just that.
“You put the wrong blankets on the bed,” he said, as he set about correcting our mistake.
The kids also discovered how much fun they could have jumping on the mattresses lying on the floor. We could hear them laughing and jumping from the living room.
The girls, however, were upset that we didn’t get their room done yet.
“When are you taking our beds apart?” Abigail asked.
They really wanted to know, just so they, too, could jump on their beds.
This past weekend we also reached another milestone in our lives as we celebrated my Nikolai’s eighth birthday.
It hardly seems possible that he’s growing up that fast. I remember this little boy taking a nap on a quilt in a laundry basket; now he’s having to do homework, some housework, and helping his younger siblings.
The time spent with them never seems enough. My kids are growing up fast. When the kids were younger, we were always saying, “I can’t wait until we are out of diapers/pullups.”
Soon, my problems of getting them in bed will be nothing compared to the challenges they will face as teenagers. Life will no longer be as simple to them as jumping on a mattress. I hope time doesn’t move any faster than it already has.
Comments
Post a Comment