Dare to be Daft

[GeorginaA]

I'm boring. It has to be said, and you can protest all you like, but fundamentally I like my routines and I'm finding my outlook is more serious and practical by the day.

This would be okay, but really I don't want to be that sort of parent, even though my nature flows against that. I want my children to think back to their childhood and remember fun and zany times. Only I'm not naturally fun nor zany. I don't have the imagination or the ideas.

Originally I was looking for a book, but Twiglett pointed out I'd probably be better off starting a thread to find out what daft/mad things you do with your kids that they love.

Teach me to be spontaneous (by helping me to plan spontenaeity very very carefully ).

Save my children from having a dull and predictable childhood. I want some magic.

Or am I a lost cause?

[southeastastra]

i bet you're not boring!! i suppose i like putting a cd on and singing which my children find funny even if i'm being serious. and dancing about. how about surprising them with a hamster

[serenity]

My Mum (at 56) will still on occasion chase us around the house pretending to be a tiger and biting our ankles......is that the kind of thing you mean?

In our house I have a bad habit of turning into various kinds of monster (tickle, botty, bouncing on the head monster) We're quite physical though, so a lot of sillyness revolves around rolling around on the sofa, or dangling people upside down. TBH I think you're probably putting yourself down a bit. how old are your DCs? Why not ask them what they think is fun, you might find they enjoy things the way they are or they could give you some ideas?

[Twiglett]

I turned into the chin grabbing monster the other day complete with sucky sounds and "I'm going to get your chin" groans

We just ate popcorn on the carpet in front of Alice in Wonderland .. but tried to make DS use chopsticks

I surprised kids with a 'party style lunch' for no reason complete with sandwiches, crisps and streamers .. you know the kind you'd lay on for a birthday party .. that went down well

We put on music sometimes and rock out

We made papier mache pumpkins during half term .. but I'm seriously considering whether we could manage a huge monster

I write notes to DS whilst he's asleep sometimes on his easel .. so he has something to read when he wakes up ... I always mean to do treasure hunts on post-it notes but haven't got round to it

[Twiglett]

I make up silly rhymes sometimes

and sometimes when I catch myself mid-shriek at kids for some misdemeanour I turn into shrieky monster and just laugh which shocks the hell out of them

picking them up and carrying them upside down is always a winner

DD (2.6) came with me to pick up DS from school dressed in a poncho with swimming goggles and carrying a large red spade ... but I can't take the credit for that one

[GeorginaA]

I'm thinking daft on a bigger scale. I don't know good examples...

... oh I know.. Like a friend who was telling me today that her mother would write detailed letters from the "tooth fairy" describing what part of the castle the tooth was going to be used for. Or I remember my mother sewing tiny little red heart cushions for valentines day (although the latter is a bad example as I loathe craft of all kinds).

You know, the sort of stuff that injects a bit of magic into the routine.

Kids are 5 and 2 btw.

[GeorginaA]

Popcorn with chopsticks sounds very entertaining I really like all the general silliness stories too. Can silliness be a learned skill?

[serenity]

Oh well in that case I fail miserably too. It sounds like hard work to me Oh god I'm so slack!

[GeorginaA]

Thinking about it, I do some silly things - like the carrying upside down over my shoulder and pretending I've lost the upside down child, and tickle monster... it's just I almost have to remind myself to be like that.

Probably more of a reflection of losing focus on the important things, maybe?

[PanicPants]

I remember some of the things my Dad did for me when I was young, and they were magical and I really want to do similiar things for ds when he's older.

I remember for my 6th birthday I had a rabbit, but first I had to follow the wool (which was attached to my card that had been pushed under the kitchen door) all around the garden until we eventually found it, he did a similair thing for my 18th when he bought me a car.

For Easter he used to hide all my Easter eggs and we would play hotter and colder until they were found.

Sometimes we acted out stories.

Played bored games as a family at least once a week.

Mum used to hide secret messages around the house - a bit like a treasure hunt.

Dad used to make me things up in the shed


Can't remember anymore, but I'm sure there were loads of things.

[GeorginaA]

Lol serenity

[Chandra]

How old are your children georgina?

[GeorginaA]

Aw panic pants, I do like the following the wool (was the "bored games" a freudian slip though? )

I confess I am looking forward to when ds2 is a bit bigger and can play board games with us all as a family. I have this romantic family vision of when the kids are teens and we have a weekly board game night over a takeaway (don't shatter my dreams yet, please!)

[GeorginaA]

Chandra: they're 5 and 2.

[fruitful]

DD's toys get up to things while she is asleep. Sometimes she comes down to breakfast to find all the teddies sat at the table having a teaparty. Thats pretty easy to do...

Make a big tent in the living room out of sheets and chairs, and have a picnic lunch in it?

Go for a walk and let them decide where to go (down here, down there ... bearing in mind they've got to walk home).

Catch the bus somewhere after from school (if you normally walk / drive).

My kids just like it when I play with them actually.

And people with zany parents often wish their parents were boring and normal.

[PanicPants]

Oh and we ALWAYS went conkering every year up in the woods, and mushrooming (although I wouldn't have a clue now what would be ok to eat )

And every so often we would go 'out' at the weekend (Sunday afternoon with tinned salmon sandwiches)to places - nealy always historical or cotswoldy.

[Twiglett]

I remember someone talking about using a child's doll and dipping their feet in glitter to leave little footprints around a child's room for .. was it the tooth fairy ? or it could've been Santa

[fruitful]

Bored games! Fantastic! That would be Monopoly, yes?

[PanicPants]

fruitful - love the idea of tents and picnics for toys.

Wish ds was a bit older

[UniSarah]

jelly with a straw, dad dancing with a door, grandfather hiding 50p in a choclate bar etc got me every time. IMHO tooth fairy letters and love hearts sound a bit twee and naff. magic is as magic does, its not compulasary and it can;t be forced.

Take a walk early morning and check out teh spider webs and teh mist rising, thats magic at this time of year on teh right morning, on teh wrong one its flipping frezeing and raining.

[Twiglett]

so many wrong mornings

[foxinsocks]

lol Georgina. I bet your children have fun already even if it is the planned sort of fun .

As a family, we are more spontaneous but dreadful at planning things (to the extreme frustration of most of our friends). I wouldn't say we were zany but we do let our children run wild a bit - we are all big fans of rolling down steep hills, making tents in the lounge, staying in our pyjamas till we feel like it, playing in the park till we can almost not feel our feet (even if it has gone dark).

I guess we very much go with the flow. We also do an awful lot of turning the music up loud and dancing round the house!

I'm sure you are more fun than you think!

[PanicPants]

tut board games lol!

I can't wait either until we can play a board game together once a week or so. Do you think they'll want to? Or will be a case of 'God Mum, I just want the play on the PS34'

[madmarchflare]

Pull funny faces, even better if you do it round the supermarket.

[Chandra]

opps sorry, you have already said...

When DS was about 2 years old we made him disapear, it was our magic trick, we counted up to three and then call him out pretending we couldn't see him (he loved that! grin)

I have organised a mountain climbing for DS and friends, we set up a tent in the living room and pretended the staircase was the everest. We ended up floding the tent with imaginary pinguins and barely escaping the "mountain" bear.

On holidays he woke up in the middle of the night and, not being able to send him back to sleep, we took him for a moonlight walk on the empty beach, it was one of those magical days (or nights) really.

But the best one so far was when our local cathedral was illuminated with a rotation of colour lights for Christmas, we told him that he could change the colour by blewing at the church then he got all worried when all the lights turned off as he thought he had ruined it!

BTW DS is 3 yrs old so many of these games may be boring for older children.

[serenity]

I think you'd have to be a bit of a 'Type A ' personality to be up like that all the time. i think it's probably more normal to have to remind yourself to do it on occasion. There's so much for us to do as it is without being some kind of Mary Poppins at the same time! There are definitely times for me when I'm tired and I've got X loads of washing to do, food to cook, work to go to when all I can do is just get through the day, never mind sprinkle fairydust on everything at the same time

I think that the fact that you want to do it and are actively trying to is a credit to you. I think though that 'fun and zany' does need to be rationed, otherwise.....well, it just isn't, is it. Fun and zany is then the norm, and Mum ignoring them whilst MNing is something to be treasured.