All the Wholesome Families

My kid was nonplussed when his friends’ mom, hosting us for a playdate, made it clear that they weren’t going to start that playdate by gathering around my son’s iPad. I’d let him bring the iPad because he’s currently obsessed with the game Among Us and wanted to show it off to his friends. I was wary of that becoming the main activity, knowing that “showing off his video game” often turns into him playing the game by himself, developing tunnel vision while his friends pay respect but slowly grow disinterested. I had planned to give him a chance to share his interest, but when I picked up on the host’s preference for less screen time for her kids, I gently turned the iPad facedown and encouraged my son to run off with them and check out what toys they had.

Naturally, he went for the laser blasters and started attacking the other mom and me while we tried to have tea and conversation. Toy guns are not my favorite, but I’d rather have him be active than not. He seemed to forget about the iPad while he and his friends ran between the living room, bedroom, and basement, their energy gradually building into a chase around and under the dining table where the adults sat. After some time of this increasingly disruptive play, I was ready to offer up the iPad; if it were my husband and me, at this point, we’d probably send our son off to his room to watch videos, just to lower the ambient volume and have a moment to ourselves. My mom friend suggested that the kids switch to a board game instead.

“Ooh yeah, a game!” I chimed in, trying to spark some interest in my kid. Despite my efforts at home, he hasn’t really warmed up to the idea of playing board games as a pastime, except for chess, which I am not good at. I grew up playing casual games like Scattergories, Trouble, Life, and Mousetrap. His friends wanted to play Life. I tried to gin up some excitement, talking pointedly about how I played that game all the time with my brother when we were kids–putting the tiny peg people into plastic cars and driving along a road that represented the journey of adulthood, exploring different careers and personal milestones along the way. It sounds a little lame now, the way I describe it, so perhaps it’s no wonder that my son tuned me out and found some Legos to build with.

The older of his two friends had optimistically set up Life in the living room, and I felt embarrassed when his mom had to gently let him down: "Buddy, it seems like nobody's really interested in that game right now.” She suggested a different game for the kids and adults to play together. (Somehow I got roped in.) The game was called Wildcraft, and it was the most wholesome thing I’d ever seen. All players work cooperatively to reach a “huckleberry patch” and bring home the berries to Grandma so she can make a pie. Along the way they traipse through a pretend woodland, collecting medicinal herbs, and use those herbs to “heal” each other when one encounters an illness or injury. These kids genuinely enjoyed the game and kindly helped me learn the rules, while my son remained apart in his own little Lego land.

I admired that family’s ease in spending a gray Sunday afternoon together around the table, playing an educational game with no guns, gore, or trademarked characters. Weekends look different in my family. My kid prefers to be home and not participate in errands, so Saturday and Sundays are largely a revolving door of either my husband or I leaving to do something, then returning so the other parent can go out. Most of our activities and hobbies are done independently, except the bits of proactive engagement with my son that I like to sprinkle in, whether it's some playtime in the yard or a game of chess, the latter of which always devolves into "crazy chess," when all pieces can ram through each other in any direction. I'm embarrassed that I even need to use the phrase "sprinkled in" to describe quality time with my child, and that when it comes to screen time, the word "deluge" is more appropriate to describe its presence in our home.

It’s all chaos. There is no chore chart, like the ones I’ve seen in at least two other houses at which we’ve had playdates. We’ve just recently started to enforce regular cleanup of our son’s bedroom, and I get to scrubbing the toilets whenever I feel like it. 

There is no enforced Family Time aside from the fact that we (usually) eat dinner together at the dining room table. We rarely take walks together, although we live in a friendly neighborhood with wide streets. Those same streets are ideal for learning to ride a bike, but my son has refused to take more bike riding lessons after our first outing, two years ago, gave him some difficulty.

I feel the sting of failure when I see glimpses of other families doing the wholesome stuff that, I’m convinced, leads to healthy, socially responsible children. Several families in our neighborhood take regular walks by our house. Angela, my friend who owns the Wildcraft game, teaches her kids about ecology and has rules about kindness posted on her walls. Abby runs 5Ks with her eight-year-old son. Lance’s and Caroline’s children go on long bike rides with them. When we met my son’s friend Roen for a playdate, Roen’s mom insisted that he greet me properly with a handshake. I have never introduced a “meeting adults” etiquette for my kid.

I’ve never aspired to be a particular type of mother, like a Crunchy Mom or Strict Mom, but there are certain values that I fear I’m failing to pass along. I believe in managing screen time, being physically active, assigning responsibilities to children, and enforcing decorum in social situations. I hope I’m modeling those ideas through my behavior, if nothing else.