Always Feeling guilty about not wanting to play with your kids? Let’s change that.

Do you have a hard time giving a full body “yes!” Whenever your kids invite you to play?

Does watching Bluey make you feel like a terrible parent because those two cartoon talking dog parents are better at being playful than you?

Do you really want to want to play with your kids, but still cringe at most (or all) requests for playtime?

These are extreme. You probably have an easy time sometimes, depending on the day, whether or not you’ve had a chance to eat (alone and uninterrupted), whether it’s the 1st or 50th request for play, or depending on what it is they want to play.

Either way, if it’s something you’d like to work on, this post is for you.

And it’s pretty simple actually.

If you can notice a wanting for wanting to play with your kids, you’ve already got this thing taken care of.

And sure, you might be thinking, “I don’t actually like playing with my kids, so I don’t think this will help.”

But if you feel guilty, odds are, there’s a twinge of desire to be able to play with your kids.

Because you know playing is a crucial part of their development and massively helpful in nourishing the grow up-child relationship.

And if there’s even just a twinge of desire, it can be tapped into and become the ticket to cartoon dog parenting level… or if you don’t watch Bluey, the ticket to your higher-parent-self.

Because desire is a feeling of expansiveness, of movement, motivation, energy, where as guilt feels icky and yeah, maybe encourages you to do better, but for some, it can make us feel the need to pull away even further (which is more about shame, but they’re good friends) and is nothing like the power of desire.

You can even try it out right now and take a moment to think about the last thing you really wanted and were able to have.

To tap into this experience of desire, you can see where and what it feels like in your body, or you can describe what it was like with a metaphor or simply tell a story of how much you really wanted that thing and what it was like to get it.

Whatever the means, the goal is to really embody or be in that experience right now.

You’ll know you’re there because maybe you start smiling or giggling/laughing, feel expansive and feel an urge to move your body.

That’s the energy that will make playing with your kid(s) more accessible.

And you should stop reading the rest of this blog post now and go do something fun with that energy.

And if you have an experience where this exercise felt… hard or challenging or brought up some sadness… that’s okay. Keep practicing, being sure to offer compassion to yourself whenever it feels hard. If offering compassion feels hard, then that’s a decent sign that it’s time for help from another (compassionate) source/person. Sometimes we need to learn/be taught how to have emotional experiences that weren’t encouraged or supported when we were kids, like if joy, pleasure, or excitement were told to be quiet or wait or expressed differently. But now this is getting into a new post topic, so if you’re interested keep an eye out or sign up for my newsletter.

And if you are one of those folks who needs some extra support, please contact me, either through email or by scheduling a free 30 minute consultation call.

Play is a beautiful practice and desire is the fuel to be able to access the things you want most in life. Being able to say “yes!” To your kid’s invitations (or demands lol) to play with them teaches them that they are deserving of both play (pleasure and flow) and of their desire and dreams.