While enjoying a typical park day I became exceedingly distracted by an over-bearing father who was instructing his toddler how to play. The man, who must have been at least 40 was shuffling his kid so quickly between the areas the poor kid couldn’t finish a sand castle or reach the bottom of the slide without his dad scooping him up and telling him what was on the agenda next.

It was to play, what power walking is to a stroll. I watched, from a seated position on a nearby bench, as my daughter dug a tunnel, made a mountain, created sand soup and sand birthday cakes (complete with stick candles) and so on - patiently, what’s the hurry? Honestly even if we only had a little time to play at the park, I would just assume let her do her own thing. Here’s a news flash - kids know what they want to play with! She doesn’t need me to play coach to her park activities.

It’s like telling someone how to take a vacation, sit, relax, read, repeat. After a while the sandbox got old and it was time, my daughter decided, to climb and slide, alrighty, off we go. Where was the dad with the agenda then? He was doing his best to stop his son from getting into our sand toys, I let him know it was ok for his boy to check them out as long as they stayed in the sandbox. It’s a small enough park, no big deal. I felt sorry for the boy and hoped this might mean I’d bought the little guy enough time to explore our toys and maybe even successfully make a sand cupcake or two. No such luck.

The father impatiently waited while his kid rifled through our bag of tricks then put everything back and informed his son it was time to slide. The kid looked bewildered, I wondered if in the back of his mind he was wondering what the hell was going on or if he was just used to this sort of rigorous schedule. At home did he get five minutes to eat, ok vegetable course is over it’s time for the protein, oop times up, time for carbs, ding! Times up hope you got enough because dinner’s over.

I myself struggle with not intervening too much. Dr. Wilma and I tend to want to keep things peaceful with the kids so we stop conflicts and make sure everyone is treating each other respectfully but there’s a certain point where we are now starting wonder if we shouldn’t be even more hands off, maybe let the growing toddlers work out some disagreements of their own. I don’t think we’ve ever been guilty of the over-guided play that this guy was up to, thank goodness. We also don’t want to be too hands-off and allow something little to build up into something huge, so we do our best to reach that balance.

Often it truly seems that the less involved we are the better! I can recall on different occasions attempts we made to get the kids involved with some activity only to find they’ve wondered off into a toy room to play and discover their own activities peacefully. There’s something really gratifying about that. A bit of a proud parent moment when you see your kid really does know how to play, they have opinions and they know just what they want to do.

Hey, they know where the slide is at the park, they know they’ve been in the sandbox for a half hour and apparently sometimes that’s just fine with them. Far be it from me to mess with their mojo. There are no timed play areas at the park (or at home) so letting your kid find their own activity is sometimes the absolute best option. The only catch really is that it takes getting used to on your part, that’s right I’m talking to you parent. It’s ok to be a bench sitter once in a while.