Learning to play

If there is one thing I'm learning from my kids it is 'play' and how to do it! Yesterday, i banged my fist on the floor in frustration at some insignificant thing which didn't work. At the sound of this, my youngest daughter looked up at me with her squinty happy eyes and her teeth-too-big-for-my-little-mouth smile, and began banging her own fists on the floor. But this was no frustrated banging, it was drumming...wildly fun drumming, accompanied by chuckles and claps! Later that day, out on a sunset picnic at the beach with our church family, my eldest daughter was playing with a young friend. They, being different ages, gender and personalities, were a bit mismatched in their games of choice, but continued to play along side one another. In a adult world I would usually do one of two things at this point: decide that we are mismatched and part ways; or work work work at the friendship until a connection was made. Not children. They just continued to play, unfazed, until one of the two rolled in the grass. And that was it. Laughter from both, fun for both and...connection. Children expect the world to keep time with the rhythm of their life, not the other way around. And I like it.