Episode 14 Play and Everyday Things

Podcast Episode Description:

In this week’s episode, Philippa and Julie ponder the role that everyday things can play in fostering connection and playfulness within families. They explore how simple, daily moments can create meaningful rituals, promote connection, and offer a playful approach to life. Sharing personal stories from their own families, they discuss how incorporating playfulness into the ordinary can help with emotional regulation, especially on those days when things feel a little tricky. Tune in for some thoughtful insights on turning the everyday into an opportunity for joy and connection.

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Transcript

The transcript is created during the editing process by software and  will contain mistakes - unfortunately at this time we don't have the time to edit the transcript's.  

Play and Everyday things

Philippa: [00:00:00] Welcome to this week's episode of Pondering Play and Therapy with me, Philippa, and 

Julie: me, Julie. And this week's episode is called Play and Everyday Things, and it leads on from an episode we did probably around number seven, where we talked. The guilt or the reticence parents may feel about not playing enough with their children.

And we had some feedback from a professional about how that episode was so helpful with some of the families that she works with, where in this case it was the mothers. I feel that they don't do enough sitting on the floor and playing with their children. They don't get the toys out.

They don't sit and play a board game. They don't sit and get the arts and crafts out on the table. They're busy. There's lots going on in life. But the guilt and the [00:01:00] shame that was brought up by not offering that to their children seemed to be really overwhelming. And yet was missing out. What we're going to look at today, which is just the everyday playfulness, sometimes with an object around the house, sometimes just with ourselves as the object and not having to set aside time to play.

Not saying, oh, somebody's advised me, or I've read on social media that if I sit and play for 10 minutes every day with my child, that's gonna make our relationship better. It may well do, and lots of times I do advocate that for a family, but also there's so many ways of building playfulness into all the tasks that go on from the moment we get up.

To the moment we go to bed, the eating, the sleeping, the dressing, the tidying, the [00:02:00] cleaning. So that's what we're gonna look at today. And we just, before we came on there, I was telling you a story of my dad. My dad was a child, primary school child during the Second World War, which in the UK was 1939 to 1945. And he was in a city where there was a lot of bombing, and his family were bombed out twice, which means they completely lost everything. So I expect if there were toys, they didn't survive. But now this is one of those memories. I don't know if what I've remembered is what he actually told me or what I've created around that.

So, apologies, dad, if this is not exactly what happened. But his job, when the sirens went was he was the oldest child in the family. His job was to get the box that had all the family paperwork in it, so that was crucial. It was a metal [00:03:00] box. He had to take that down to the shelter. That was the big boy's job.

He was probably only about eight or nine. That was his job. I remember him telling me that there was one time sirens went, everybody had to go down. He got the box and there was must have been several babies in the family. The baby was picked up by whoever the adult was, his mum, his dad and aunt.

Somebody picked up the baby and the potato.

Baby. And the potato. Yeah, the potato. The baby was playing with the potato and they made sure they took the potato down to the shelter. And that's a story I've heard my dad tell many times and it's just, it's come back today thinking about this concept of playing with everyday objects. I actually, a, is a.

It's hard. You do a lot of teething on a potato peeled or not peeled as long as it's fairly washed. A carrot. I was thinking there's lots of [00:04:00] vegetables. That could be a wonderful play object. A potato rolls. You can get your fingers into it, you can pass it to somebody else. It could be passed back to you.

But the simplicity of just using a root vegetable. As a play object just has come back to me today. So thinking about how we can use everyday objects, things that are just sitting around the house that we haven't gone to the shop and bought, and it's labeled as a toy. So I'm just thinking for you, I've got that example of the.

Things that you see around your house that have become play objects in your family? 

Philippa: I remember I've, got a son as people who've listened to the podcast. Well, no, I've also got three godchildren who. Now 33, 30 and 27, [00:05:00] and my child is 22. So all four of those I would say when they were I don't know, from about 18 months, probably till about five or six everyday objects were one of their favorite things to play with. Mm-hmm. And sawbones and wooden spoons, just, I was thinking just the best thing and ERs, do you know what I mean? You can make a great drum kit outta those. And I remember my oldest goddaughter.

She used to wear the lander on her head as a hat. Oh, nice. And was just amazing. And also, her godfather's, motorcycle hel helmet and gloves. I've got a fantastic picture of her with that on and the gloves and just playing and just having a great time with these things. And also

my son and the, my youngest godson, used to like making things out of, like bicarbonate soda and flour and just. [00:06:00] Mush, really? That you could put them outside in a, in, on a sunny day with a load of outta date and things that you found in your cupboard, and a bit of water, and a wooden spoon and several bowls, and they would just have the best time.

I mean, they need you to go and check and say, oh, what are you making? What does it like look like? And. Pretend to eat it and all those sorts of things. But in general they would just make these amazing concoctions that they thought were potions or whatever it was. We had a dog when my son was little, and you just have to be carefully, didn't eat too much of the baking soda or whatever was falling all.

Mm-hmm they were just, yeah, everyday staff that they. Had the greatest time with and cardboard boxes. Who doesn't love a cardboard box? All four of those kids loved cardboard boxes. And even now in the play, [00:07:00] our admin staff will save cardboard boxes 'cause we make dens outta cardboard boxes.

Yeah, those are just fabulous. I'm sure you must have loved a cardboard box, Julie. 

Julie: Oh I was in my local big supermarket the other day and there was this. Boy, probably about five or six. And he'd found a big vegetable box those sort of flat, wide vegetable boxes. And he'd asked, he'd seen it, somebody was taking broccoli out of it and he'd asked for this box and that was fine.

He was given the box. And for a good half hour. 'cause I was up and down my aisles and they were up and down. He was there with his dad or parent, I don't know who it was. And he spent the whole of the shop just scooting himself around the shop. In this cardboard box. He sat in the box and pulled himself along for the whole shop.

And then at the checkout, I saw him and he put it on his head and he was. Waving his [00:08:00] arms around. He'd become sort of some astronaut or something, but he was serious about this play and it allowed the man who was with him, maybe his dad, his uncle, or somebody else, to just get on with the shop while he scooted around.

Very, very slowly. But yeah, pulling yourself along in this box. 

Philippa: Shall I tell you a story about my, son in shop? It wasn't really that funny, but it was everyday objects in a really honestly mortifying way. So he was, I don't know, running in the shop. He was very tricky to keep still. My, my little person was, and he liked to move all the time.

And, thankfully it was in the, it was in the, shampoo, and aisle that down there. It wasn't in the wine aisle and I dunno what he was playing. Anyway, he put his hand at the beginning of the shampoos. In, [00:09:00] in next to the bottle, and then walked down, the aisle with his hand in watching the shampoos fall off like a dominoes.

He was absolutely mesmerized and thrilled by this reaction to all these bottles one by one. It wasn't like even fast, it was just watching them fall. And it was midway down the aisle and I was at the top and it was like, you know when it happens in slow motion? Yeah. And you can see it happening.

I can see what he's about to do and he is having the best time watching these shampoo bottles fall one by one, by one by one. Oh, run down the aisle to say, oh my God, don't do that.

Julie: It happens, 

Philippa: but those are everyday objects that he had the greatest, he wasn't being mischievous, he wasn't being [00:10:00] naughty or, he wasn't doing it in a way of like, hi, I am gonna do this and be destructive. There was, it was none of that. It was playful. It was, it was enjoyable watching these things fall off one, one by one.

It was curiosity. Yeah. I think sometimes you have to see it in that way, don't you? That kids are playing with these everyday objects and yet as adults, that is mortifying. Watching all these, shampoo balls fall off one after one as I am trying to run down the aisle. Dodge people to get him to stop him, doing the morph stuff.

But for him, he wasn't being naughty, he wasn't doing it to be, mean or destructive or any of those sorts of things. He was just really curious. And kids do that, don't they? They might put their hands in a cereal bottle to, to feel what all the cereal feels like, and they might sprinkle them over the table and. [00:11:00] I think as parents it can feel like there is a misbehavior there, but I wonder if sometimes. It's just about being playful, about being curious about wondering what happens if you crush the Rice Krispies on the table? What happens to all those little rice pops? Mm-hmm. You know, and yeah, it's a pain and the.

But when you've gotta clean it up and it does make a mess, and I get, if you're going out to school, you try and get everybody out the door that can add stress to it. But I wonder if sometimes it's just that natural curiosity of a child of wondering, what is this? What does this look like?

What does this taste like? What does this, I remember my goddaughter touching the iron. Oh, and it was hot. Do you know what I mean? And burning her fingers. And again, she, we told her don't touch the high end, but you're just curious when you're that age, aren't you? And what does hot mean? [00:12:00] Does it mean it's hot?

Like when I have, a. Hot drink of chocolate. Well, no, it's a lot hotter than that. Oh yeah it's me and I'm not, again, advocating that kids should be touching ions, but that curiosity, 

Julie: I think that sense of what's gonna happen if I do that. Like even like balancing a rubber on the end of a ruler, how far can it go before it tips off? , the sort of daft, I suppose, like look mini physics experiments that might be going on on a desk all the time. I sit here at my desk when I'm on Zoom. I'm not doing it right now Philippa, but lots of times I would've got a whole load of lovely paper clips. I love clipping all the paperclips together and putting them into patterns and then un clipping them again. Is that play? Yeah, I think so. I love sharpening a pencil till it's just that little bit sharper than it needs to be, and just the curiosity, just the [00:13:00] sort of fiddling with things can be wonderful. For me as myself, but also me with a little person as well just to play with. As you say, the source pans, having that drawer at the bottom of the cupboard that's got things that little people can safely use.

Yeah. You might have your draw stops, you know those locks on lots of other drawers in the kitchen, but the bottom drawer could be the wooden spoons and a few saucepans. And there's nothing better for a 2-year-old than to just open and close a cupboard that can just feel great to get everything out and put everything back in again over and over and over again. That just sort of playfulness while the adult is doing something else, but we're in the same space. So we've got that sort of playfulness where the child may be doing their [00:14:00] thing. While the adult is going, going on with their thing, the cooking, the cleaning, the clearing up, but to be in the same space together.

Philippa: Yeah. And isn't it, that's about how we find out about the world. We do the same still as adults, don't we? Doing this podcast, we've had to try out loads of different ways and we know we are on, I know episode 10 11. Now we've got more in different things than we started with in episode one. 'cause we've had to test out what and how we do it. And I guess when you are a little person, you are testing out all these things, aren't you? Even as a mid-age child, you get access to more things that you can reach and that you can see. And you might have adults that tell you what they do or what they don't do or what you should or shouldn't do with them, but part of.

Our natural ability [00:15:00] to develop, to be creative, to do new things is to. Find out for yourself in, in, in many ways. And if we didn't have kids that were curious, that messed about that pushed these things, then we wouldn't have adults that did that, and therefore we wouldn't have all the amazing things that we've got.

That curiosity is what, in some ways makes us. Different to other mammals, isn't it? That ability to be curious to develop things. So why wouldn't you be curious about those shiny things at the back of the cupboard or all those jars in the kitchen or whatever it is that's that. 

Julie: So there's the kind of play and curiosity that sort of verging a bit on learning, but not the sort of learning where you set up in advance what's gonna happen. A play that might be called, you're just mucking around with something. It's not structured time. It's not, you're gonna start it at this [00:16:00] time and end at this time, and there isn't a task, but there are some everyday objects lying around.

See what happens if you muck around with them and what you make of them. And that's for adults and little children and big children and teenagers. Anybody could do that if you've just got a bit of space. And a bit of time and a few everyday objects to just see what happens. And I think it can really loosen up the brain, I find if I'm doing something with the paperclips or just tidying out the kitchen drawer love that. Take everything out, put it all back in again, more neatly without the crumbs. I can often think about things that I'm finding difficult to think about while I'm doing a, a task like that. And I almost think of it as play. I'm thinking as well and thinking about this play in everyday objects about the everyday tasks, the getting up between the [00:17:00] getting up and the going to bed at night, all the tasks that keep us alive.

And how we might build in a bit of playfulness, especially with an adult and a child. How do we build in a bit of playfulness without it stopping the task happening? Ultimately we do need to get up fed, dressed, and out the door in the morning and at the other end of the day, we've got every, gotta get everybody back in bed, undressed washed, and back to bed.

That's the basic routine, whatever age we are, whether we've got an 18 month old or an 81-year-old in the house, basically still the same routine. Get up, fed, washed, cleaned, and off to do whatever you're doing and reverse all that at night. So all over the world that those tasks are happening billions of times a day.[00:18:00] 

I often stand at the railway stations. I live right opposite a railway station, so I can see the trains going in and out. And sometimes if I'm standing there, say at seven o'clock in the morning, if it's a commuter day for me, and there'll be, I don't know, 200 people standing on that platform and thinking, that's a lot of showers, that's a lot of beds that have been made or not made.

That's a lot of socks that have gone on. That's a lot of breakfast that have been eaten, coats that have been put on hair, that's been done, deodorant that's been sprayed and rolled all to get that lot of people onto this train and 10 minutes later there'll be another lot getting on the next train and the sort of common humanity of that.

Yeah. Everyday tasks. And I don't expect many of those people have sat down for 10 minutes and played. But there could be playfulness in the way we've got from six o'clock to seven o'clock in the morning. Yeah, [00:19:00] so I'm thinking about things like, putting socks on with a child and counting toes, twiddling toes, playing some sort of little daft game.

Whatever suits you and your family just in getting socks on or getting shoes on. That classic one of, pulling a jumper over a head and it, oh, it's got stuck. Oh my goodness. How this head's got bigger and bigger. I'm never gonna be able, oh, oh, oh no, I think it's coming. And then or I found you or some sense of hello that comes from putting something over the head. So yeah, Philippa, for you, just those everyday tasks. That have to be done. How can they become playful? 

Philippa: Hmm. I wonder. It is that thing of, I'll race up the stairs. Who's gonna get up there first? That joy in with little people of [00:20:00] just being chased up the stairs is that little bit, are they gonna get me?

Are they gonna catch me? Are they gonna, and then you get to the top and they win and and it's like, oh, well done. I think we, I do a game. In Thera play with that, where we call it Stock Mountain. I build a pile of cushions and I start on one side and I pull my sock down. So it's hanging off and the child's on the other and the parent will say, go, and we'll race round.

And I'm trying to catch the child's toes and the child is trying to pull my sock off. Of course, they always pull my sock off and I never catch them. But there's that energy, that joy in that, that being chased or something like that. Or even just the, are you gonna get your shoes on before mine?

Or, things like that. And again, like I've said, my child was. Was very fizzy, and bouncy and a little bit like Tigger when he was little, so he couldn't walk and hold my hand. It [00:21:00] would've been an impossible thing for him to do sometimes if he'd got a lot to say, he'd walk next to me and blah and tell me lots of things, but. He didn't really walk next to me. My godchildren, when they were little, they would walk and hold my hand and whereas he was just not a walker. So we played a game where he could run. And if I said halt, he had to stop. And then he'd done and then I'd say Go and he'd run again.

And some of that was to help that if he was ever gonna run on a road and I said, halt, he'd got into my head, I'll stop. So we played again where he ran and he stopped, or he ran to one lamppost and then would run back again, and then he'd run to the next lamppost and run back again.

Yeah. So there was this thing that I knew that he was never gonna hold my hand. He just was not a, it was just not possible for him to do that but we played games that kept him safe, that kept him from running way too far that I couldn't see him, or that if [00:22:00] he needed to, to stop quickly, he'd got in his head where mum says, halt a halt.

And he would stand like a soldier. And so, so we just went with where he was and he, so I think you can use playfulness in lots of those tasks. And even I think with teenagers, you can do it around. I need you to help me do tea tonight. You might be teaching them how to make things or something.

Okay? You've got five potatoes. We'd be a big family if we'd got five potatoes each. But, let's just say salad potatoes. Yeah. Who's gonna peel, who's gonna, peel them the fastest? Or can you peel them and keep as much of the peel in one in, in one go, rather than in little, little chunks you can build that.

Level of competition, of playfulness into it. And this isn't about degrading someone and then saying, oh, that was rubbish, Luke, you haven't done it. It's just, it's not about 

playfulness. And I think for teenagers [00:23:00] connecting sometimes in competition because they are building that sense of identity. Is, is really helpful.

But what we want to do is then celebrate their success, don't we? So we want to look at how fantastic they've peeled the potato how long they kept the skin together. Whatever it is, is that celebration in their success. And that can help you then get through some things that can be more difficult, but in a playful way.

Julie: Yeah, and I'm glad you said that about competition because when you first mentioned it, I could feel my sort of, my hackles going up a little bit and gonna say, oh, oh, oh, I don't wanna get into some sort of competition where it becomes about win. It really becomes about the winning and the losing, and that's a huge thing. I was gonna say just for children, but I think huge thing for any human. To feel that you've [00:24:00] lost or that you've not been good enough, or you are in some way lacking can be a huge thing to recover from. And everybody listening will know the children in their lives and how they sit with that.

Some children can really relish that and some children can really feel very, very hurt by a competition or any sense that they might lose, and so that they'll never enter into anything that's about a competition. But I suppose one of the things I'll often do is say, okay, between us, how many of these can we get done?

Right. Okay. You reckon we can peel eight potatoes in three minutes? Four. Okay. I reckon we're gonna feel we're gonna get five potatoes in three minutes. Okay. Let's see. Together, we can do the task and see who's won the guessing bit. So that might be another way of thinking of it.

Philippa: Absolutely. I remember my youngest godson, he would never tidy [00:25:00] up, ever. He just, he had got a real strong will, but he would be able to put his toys in the basket if you did that. Like ca you know, and we might have a competition be that we both had to get together. Yes. Can we put all these toys away before the second hand gets round, round there again? So we would, the thing about it is though, is then you have to be mindful that they are gonna be doing it fast. So the potatoes might not be peeled perfectly well. That's the, the toys might get slammed in the thing, and you've got to then not, not. As a parent, not to 'em off for that. Have you put them in carefully. Yeah. If you are putting that sense of urgency in, there's a little bit of finesse that's not gonna be there, isn't there? So 

Julie: you Yeah, I like that. The finesse. I remember one of my brothers, he, when his children were very little, he'd have them sat on the floor in the kitchen with a sort of [00:26:00] fairly blunt knife. Chopping cucumbers and the tomatoes and things, and he says one of the things about having young children is you just get used to very strange vegetables and salad. You just need to get used to. Doing their stuff for some reason, unknown to the rest of us. He used to put rubber gloves on his feet and become, my brother would put the yellow rubber gloves on his feet and become the ducky while he was doing the cooking at the kitchen, and the children would be at the ducky feet. IP chop in very strange shapes, all the vegetables and things to go into the pot.

But I remember him saying, yeah, absolutely. If you've got young children, you just get used to strange shaped vegetables. 

Philippa: Oh, that makes me, made me think that dokey thing. Have you ever seen the holiday with Jude Law and Cameron Diaz and, oh, what's the English actress name? I can't remember. Anyway, [00:27:00] she, Karen Diaz and doula's got these two little children and she goes for dinner and they say to him, daddy, do napkin head.

And it's so sweet. And he put, it's a bit like the rubber gloves on your, brother's feet as he puts this, napkin over his head and then puts his glasses back on, and then talks in this funny voice with this his napkin head that make these little children really laugh.

And it makes it's quite an amusing scene, but those kind of things are just so lovely, aren't they? If you can use those rubber gloves, napkins, those everyday things that you can just, be playful with just 

Julie: yeah. Be a bit daft with and just, it becomes then that family or that unit or that relationships.

It's, it's the culture of just that family. So in your example with the film, you know, the napkin head. That was created, I guess [00:28:00] around their own table or their own place in their own flat or wherever they live. And then, wow. It becomes really weird when you take it outside that because something that's very normal in one family, like putting rubber gloves on your feet while you're doing the cooking, is, it's not normal.

It's not typical in most families, but it becomes the thing that family does. I think often for children who've moved into a family or created family through adoption or through foster care, or through moving from one family to another they've moved from their birth mother to their grandparents. There's a real need and desire for everybody to create the new culture. What are the things we do? What are the things that make us laugh? What are the things that in this household, we just need to say a word [00:29:00] and everybody knows what it means? So I'll give an example. I've got family living abroad and one, one of my nieces. Really, really loves a particular type of bread that we get here. And so since she's been very, very little, anytime I've met them at the airport, I've always had to give her sandwiches with that bread, with peanut butter on it.

And even at 14, she came to visit. Recently there was a conversation just to confirm that I was gonna meet her at the airport with that bread. With peanut butter and cut in a certain way, and it's just neither of us needed to say anything. I just needed to offer her the topware box and she just needed to sit on the train on the way back from the airport smiling, and that was us back connected because for 10 years, every time I've met her at [00:30:00] the airport, I've always handed her that type of sandwich.

Mm. And, and it's, and it's just her. That's what she and I have together. We've got lots of other things we do together, but every relationship and every family can create its own culture around playful things like that. That mean, I know you, you know me. We like that. We've got this thing going together.

And I don't know how old she will be when she stops wanting that sort of sandwich when she comes, God help the supermarket if they ever stop making that bread.

Philippa: It is making me think when you're talking about that. I think in our, one of our very early episodes, I think it might have been episode two, we talked about play and safety, and we talked there about how play makes connection, which I guess is what you were talking about. You're talking about reconnection and developing those things, but I suppose, in [00:31:00] the light of everyday objects, how.

Children are really inventive. I think when they're outside maybe, this is, I mean I'm sure they do it inside, but I suppose I'm thinking you might find kids and you take them to the park and then all of a sudden they meet children that they didn't know. Or I guess even in places where there's been.

Destruction of the homes or whatever and they can find objects and play with them whether they are, tree branches that become swords or they find something round and it becomes a football or they hide in the bracken and it becomes their fault or whatever it is that children are really inventive if you give them the freedom.

To be able to connect through everyday objects and play. And it can be anything that even setting out for a meal and rolling up a napkin and playing finger football across the [00:32:00] table or something like that. There's children, I don't suppose adults, but particularly children and young people, can find ways of connecting with everyday objects playfully that brings them.

Into the space of others that they have never met before and may never see again. Yeah, but they get some joy from that 

Julie: yeah. So not just everyday objects and playing within your family and creating the relationships within that, but using playfulness with an everyday object in meeting somebody new.

Sitting in a waiting room or sitting on in transport, as you say, meeting somebody in the park. I was thinking even just out walking the dog, if you've got a dog, you've got your dog person, I'm a cat person, but just the playfulness that can arise with a pebble that you start kicking down the street.[00:33:00] 

And then, oh, you've lost your pebble or you've picked off another one, and then you start passing it to the person next to you, and then it becomes a game. And how quickly that playfulness, that spontaneous playfulness becomes connecting. Especially, I'm thinking about when I meet somebody with whom I don't share a language.

How I can play or be playful in ways when I don't have a language with that person. So I'm thinking about children I've met and I don't share a language or an adult I've met where we can still do something. Especially as you said, outdoors. There's something about that common space where we can notice things together.

We can pass things back and forth between us and language doesn't need to have to be part of it. 

Philippa: And I just think if you've got, if you've [00:34:00] got that there and then you've got children who you know, maybe are struggling to regulate, I suppose what, that's what it was making me think about was that you've got children who are struggling to regulate. What I guess we've been talking about is how easy play slips into or playfulness.

Slips into relationships, slips into building connections, whether it's in a family of origin, whether it's in a new family, whether it's, with strangers. There's a way that playfulness helps to connect us in some way, whether that's over a lifetime or over an hour. And I'm wondering about using that playfulness to help regulation.

I. So if you've got a toddler who has just got a really big feeling and they can't manage, or a teenager who's really stroppy and has had a really hard day at school and really needs connection. But they're in that space where, yeah, but I shouldn't need my mom or I [00:35:00] shouldn't need my dad or my granny, but I really do because my brain isn't ready to be, do this on my own.

I'm wondering how, or I'm thinking about how play brings that in. So I'll give you an example. I might have said this before. In our house we used to have these, I've still got them, when I say used to like pom-poms that are snowballs. 

Julie: Mm-hmm. 

Philippa: And sometimes if we had a disconnect appropriately, and not when my kid was in the middle of, ranting, on a game or, to his mates or in the middle of something, I would just open, hit his, his door and chuck a pomp on at it not so it hit him, but just so it'll land near him.

And then he'd throw it back and then we'd have three or four minutes of around the house, a little bit of a, a snowball fight, and then he'd go back. And that just. Brings back that connection, that brings that I'm here for you, mate. I know you've had a really tough day today, [00:36:00] but I'm still around for you, so I'm gonna connect, or if I know he, he'd had a hard day, I would leave him like his favorite little packet, biscuits on his computer desk.

A kid who's maybe really fizzy coming in from school, wrapping them in a blanket and making them into a sausage roll and then rolling them out like a yo-yo you are in that space of where that energy is for them. But you are connecting with them and bringing them back, almost lending them your calm, your, you are saying, okay, I'm gonna match where you are.

I'm gonna attune to you. But actually it's gonna be okay. We're going to get through this together and I wonder if those everyday objects can bring play in into that. Like even just play red car, yellow car. In a car journey that's really difficult for a child.

Mm. Or sending them a funny meme, for a teenager that maybe has just fallen out with their friends. Those kind of [00:37:00] things can help with regulation and connection

Julie: yeah, just anything that just gives you a slight smile or a slight sense of somebody else has got me. Yeah, I'm in a foul mood this afternoon.

I really don't wanna come downstairs. I don't wanna go and reconnect physically, but somebody just slipping something under the door or just humming a little tune or. a quick WhatsApp message or something that will just make me smile and say I'm being thought about, I'm held in mind, gives me a way back.

It gives me a way back in that says, yeah, I'm still part of this family. I'm still part of this relationship. Maybe I need half an hour, a couple of hours to just out and connect with other people and then to, yeah, just to have something that will make me smile, and I've been thinking a lot [00:38:00] about, some of the parents I work with who have, for all sorts of reasons, are really struggling to do this playful connection, connecting with their children.

And I can do that. Within the play session or within my parenting sessions with them. But there's a sense that they're doing it slightly through GR teeth, so they might be quite compliant in following all Julie's instructions, Julie said throw pom poms at your child, or Phillipa says, throw pom poms at your child.

Julie says, every time you pass your child, you might just give them a little tweak on their shoulder or. But if their whole body, if the parent's whole body is not conveying kindness, wisdom I'm having, I'm enjoying being with you, then the child absolutely picks that up. [00:39:00] So I'm thinking about the tone with which the voice comes out what facial expression is there?

What bodies, body shapes are being made? Where are your eyebrows? You know how sometimes I think, yeah I need to force some playfulness. I need to force it out of myself sometimes, but I make an effort to make my voice a more sing-song voice to, I think there's something wonderful about just raising your eyebrows that just lightens the whole face and it looks curious having a resting face or a slightly smiling face, tipping your head to one side. All of those things, even before you say something or do something, conveys to the child the adult, the adolescent, ah, Julie's up for something. I'm [00:40:00] okay.

She's coming at me with gentleness. Even though sometimes inside it's, I'm like, oh gosh, this is hard. But actually what this other person needs from me right now is some playfulness. The curiosity, the empathy, and I need to dig a bit deeper sometimes to find that so that it's not just in the action of saying, let's peel the potatoes together.

It is in my voice and the way I say it. Ooh, okay. We've got this whole bag of potatoes to get through. I know it's huge, but if we don't do this, we're not getting any dinner. Right? Do you wanna do the even? Okay. I've sorted them. Even numbers, odd numbers, right? Ready, steady go. And I need to put some effort into that because I recognize that I'm not always feeling playful myself.

I'm not always feeling that it's gonna be easier to peel these [00:41:00] potatoes with somebody else. Actually, sometimes I'd rather just get to peel them on my own. But especially if I've had a fallout with a young person, I need to find a way. We've talked about this before. Open the door to let them back in so that I'm not grumpy and in the kitchen and they're grumpy and in their bedroom waiting for me to feed them. If I can do something where we're doing something together and get into that more sing songy voice, Hey, Ooh, lots of potatoes. Okay. I wonder if there's such a thing as a world record potato peeling speed. Oh, you could looked it up, right? Okay. No, because they'll be on their phone straight away to look it up.

Okay. Can we beat that speed? Right. But I know that I'm not always in the mood to do. But as the adult in the household or the adult in the situation, can I dig a little bit deeper [00:42:00] and have you and others on my shoulder, the people who've done that for me? Can I have them in the background kind of whispering to me.

Okay. Julie bit play might help. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Even though I know I might not be in the most playful mode. Does that make sense? That It does. Yeah. Listeners it's not that I'm spending all of my night life being playful. I'm as grumpy as everybody else sometimes and as stress. Yeah. And as miserable.

But there are times where. I want to get back into connection and that takes a bigger effort some days. 

Philippa: It just made me think that, and this, I'm just wondering if we can just think about this the last bit before we, we wind up. So I, I think that makes sense that often we are stressed and playful.

Being playful and using playfulness. For whatever reason, maybe isn't comfortable for us. And I wonder if some people just don't feel [00:43:00] playful but, um, I know that you and I have talked about before and you particularly have talked about maybe there are other ways to be playful about using things like word games or things like that, that aren't, it's not about being playful and throwing snowballs or even banging drums or you know what it.

Those kind of things, but maybe those things around where you're driving in a car, let's all say, let's all think of an animal beginning with A and all think of an animal beginning with B, or see how many yellow cars we can spot off, because that in itself is playful. It's a different type of play, isn't it?

It's more. Cognitive in your head play than in your body play, but it is a way of connecting and being or that game where, you know, if I say elephant, then you have to say something that links like trunks, and then somebody says swimming. And those word play games and be playful 

Julie: and sometimes that playfulness can be in our [00:44:00] bodies or my brother's case in your. Sometimes our playfulness is in our hands, and sometimes our playfulness is, as you said, very much in our top brain. It's cognitive and everybody will know where they, they best sit with that. And it might be you've got one preference or that, during the course of life 

you move from one preference to another. But yeah, that's maybe this is an episode for another day is thinking about what if everything we've said today just doesn't resonate? And there's still a sense of, I never feel like that, I never feel playful, I never have any ideas of what to do. And I'm wondering as we're speaking today, I'm thinking so much about.

My parents and those who were around as I was growing up I don't have memories of them [00:45:00] being particularly playful, but I've got it from someone, somebody has been around for me to hold me, to feed me, to tussle with me, to put me to bed, to I, I've had something that I don't physically remember, but how hard it is for parents.

To be parenting, especially a really a really young one. If they've not had that themselves, they've not had that from their own parents, carers, aunts, uncles, neighbors, those who are around for them, they didn't have that sense of, I can connect with you, even if we're stressed, I can connect with you even when life is really, really tough.

So how can they. Possibly give that to their child if it's not something that's in their, woven into them from their childhood and you and I [00:46:00] both work with families where that's part of their beginning in life and they become a parent. And who's the parent to them then? Yeah. The health worker, the social worker, the therapist, the gp.

But in those times when things get really stressful in the middle of the night when the baby is screaming, what can they draw on to regulate themselves and be playful and get their child back to sleep when they haven't had that experience? When they were a baby, when they were a toddler, when they were a teenager?

Mm-hmm. 

Philippa: So that's, yeah, another time. I think that's a good place to end because whilst we've talked a lot about being in play, being playful, using play as a distraction, as a connection, as a tool to help, children transition from one, one, task to another one part of the day, to another part of the day.

And it is an [00:47:00] amazing thing, players. But like you say, not everybody can do it. And there are many reasons why people can't do it. And I think, maybe that's our next episode is play, learn. And if we don't learn play, what happens? Because what we don't want to be doing in any of our episodes is saying to, to parents, carers, this is what you should be doing.

You know what we hope? What we hope is that this is helpful. For people to think about the role that play can be in your life and how it can help. But sometimes people do need support and help to get there and that's maybe what we'll talk about next time. So thank you for listening to this episode of PON in Play and Therapy, if you've liked it.

Please hit [00:48:00] subscribe and we'll see you next time. 

Julie: Bye-bye.