Play Creates Union

In reading chapter 2 "Bodies to Sticks, Make-Believe to Resolution" from Helping Your Kids Cope with Divorce, I felt positive about all the time I have dedicated to being with Iggy as he grew up.  I never had an issue in making him first - making him the priority in my life, above art-making, work responsibilities, no matter what, I found ways to have Iggy be my priority.  I also always enjoyed playing with him, from getting on the floor and building cities from wooden blocks and train tracks to teaching him how to ride a bicycle on the hillside of a Finnish graveyard in Lakeland to teaching him how to shoot a basketball and dribble to practicing his baseball pitching as a catcher even when it killed my knees...  I love having all these moments with my son.

As a child to Nicaraguan immigrant parents, my parents had to work hard.  Fortunately, in the 1970s in San Francisco, it was financially possible for my mom to stay at home until I entered first grade and I was certainly attached to her at the hip.  However, my dad worked all the time.  During my early childhood he regularly worked two jobs, so my only real time with my dad were the weekends and even then, it was largely only Sundays as he also worked on Saturdays due to the second jobs.  Our Sundays consisted of mass and family excursions.  I don't really recall my dad ever playing with me.  Apparently he had been quite a soccer player in his youth, but I never played soccer with him.  Being a college professor has given me the flexibility to dedicated countless hours to my son and I made sure to take full advantage of that freedom.

From the reading, there are a few important takeaways:

Allow Iggy to express his feelings.  Allowing him to talk and act out will establish the expression of feelings as a safe space that will cause him to be "less likely to withdraw or become depressed or engage in self-destructive behavior."  Unfortunately, getting Iggy to express himself to me is like pulling teeth.  After we've had an angry episode, he tells me that he doesn't want to talk about it, he prefers to just move on.  I give him that space initially, but eventually return to what happened, how it happened, why it happened and how we could have avoided it.

If your child ever feels you have invaded his privacy, betrayed his confidence, or abused his trust, he may shut you out.

When Iggy wants to keep a secret with me, and not merely hiding something from his mom, I must remember to respect that secret.  This is something that can be tricky for me as I tend to be very open about things.

Respect your child's privacy and his ability to work through these issues in his own time, on his own terms.  Just the fact that your child is expressing his feelings is significant, meaningful and productive, even if on one observes or joins him.  As parents, we naturally feel that the sooner we can make the hurt go away, the better.  There's no way to bypass the emotional process your child must go through, one from which we will grow.  Absolve yourself of any pressure to come to the rescue.  By being there for him, proving you deserve his confidence and his trust, and listening when he decides he wants to talk, you will have done everything a parent can and helped immensely in improving his ability to express himself and hasten his journey through his difficult time. 

Children may use play to act through their feelings without having to deal with the reality itself.  They control the play, so they can stop at any point, but in play they can be expressive and work through emotions and pain.  In this form play is how kids learn, how they socialize, it is the work of children.

By playing with Iggy, he is able to see the child in me.  In my case, this may not be necessary.  I think the child in me comes out all the time.  But as I stated earlier, I think that by playing together, we have a very strong bond.

The chapter presents two exercises - one is to listen to instrumental music together and try to make up a story based on the music.  An alternative to this is to sit together and listen to music and discuss how a song makes one feel and what it is that the musician is trying to express.  I enjoy listening to music with Iggy, but we don't generally actively discuss the music, so this would be a great exercise to try out.

The second exercise, is to lie outside in a park on the grass with the tops of our heads touching and imaging we are floating up to the clouds and then discuss where we would float off to.  This to me sounds like a great exercise as we do spend a lot of time in the park together.