Sideline Mom

I am a Stay-At-Home-Mom.  Which means that I stay home with my kids.  I am a homeschooling mom.  Which means that I stay home with my kids all day.  It's me and the kids pretty much all day every day.  So I spend a I lot of time with my kids, talking to them, loving on them, teaching them, just being with them.

But that doesn't mean that I naturally play with my kids.  When they want to have a tea party, they have a tea party.  I do something else.  When they want to play a toy game, they play a toy game and I fold laundry.  When we go to the park, the kids play their games and I sit and watch with the occasional push on the swing or help on the monkey bars.

Last week Lizzy decided to work her way through a Learn to Draw book.  She was sitting at the dining room table drawing when I sat down next to her.  I got a piece of paper and a pencil and proceeded to draw the same fish that she was drawing.  "You're going to draw with me, Mommy?!"  And off she chatted for the next fifteen minutes as we both sat and drew a fish.

Saturday we were at the Lake House again and I took the kids to their favorite park.  I sat and watched my kids play for about two minutes when I decided I wanted to play, too.  "Mommy, you want to play with us?!  Hey guys!  Mommy is going to go down the slide!"

I went down the slide by myself.  Then Joy wanted to do a train with me so she sat behind me.  The third time down she sat in my lap.  I played follow the leader with Lizzy.  I gave Joy a push on a swing and then got on my own swing.

In the afternoon Hubby and I took the kids to the beach to go on a beach hike.  After about five minutes of walking, we encountered a stream that came off the sand dune and fed into Lake Michigan. We walked in the stream.  Then we played in the stream.  Hubby discovered a clump of clay and suddenly we were on a clay-hunting mission.  We ended up with a big bowl full of clay that we're going to play with this week.

As Hubby and I were watching the kids explore the stream and hunt for clay, I turned to him and said, "You know what I like about you?  That you aren't so focused on the goal that you miss the bunny trails along the way.  We came to the beach to get in a practice hike before our mountain trip.  But then we found this cool stream and you had us stop to explore it and here we are a half hour later, still at the stream, our hike long forgotten.  And you're okay with that."

I spend so much of my life raising, teaching and guiding my kids that I forget sometimes how important it is to actually play with my kids.  This is a lesson I am learning from Hubby.  To stop being so focused on my goals that I miss the fun of the bunny trails.  To hunt for clay in a stream.  To run on a jungle gym and race down slides.  To sit and draw a picture with my little artist.  To stop being a sideline mom.