I actually missed this post until it was quoted.
The poster has made something up and put it in quotation marks as though it's actually a quotation. I never said, nor implied, that I had a "neglected childhood from [sic] [my] mother".
I said that my mother didn't play with her own children which was completely normal and appropriate for her generation of parents and my generation of children. I had plenty of siblings and friends- children actually do not need their parents to play with them in order not to be neglected. Play with peers and alone is important and play directed by adults is not necessarily better, in fact it's arguably a poor substitute.
Justaanothermum was presumably neglected by her English teacher during the lesson about quotation...
Parents need to love and care for their children, meet their needs for food, shelter, safety, acceptance, warmth, appropriate clothing and other necessities, as well as their higher level needs - giving them space and opportunity to play and learn through playing, not directing their play, and meeting or enabling their needs for education, socialisation, friendship , society, life skills to be met etc. etc.
Children need access to education but their parents don't have to be the ones who actively teach them to read, just provide the opportunity and resources and environment to learn. The same goes for play.
Children also need space and time which isn't structured and narrated by adults in order to develop creativity and self reliance and be comfortable and confident in themselves.
My mother wasn't perfect but she was a good enough, if very busy and often stressed, full time working professional woman with five children. She certainly wasn't a neglectful mother.
Her performance grandparenting was out of character and jarring because it very clearly was performative in her case. It probably was an attempt to prove something to me and others as she probably did absorb the modern idea that parents (lets be honest, mothers) are meant to do lots of imaginative play and perhaps she wanted to over-compensate for not having done that 30+ years before she became a grandparent, but it wasn't a standard requirement in the 60s and 70s especially for the minority of mothers of large families working full time. None of my friends parents played with their children either, as far as I remember. Perhaps they kicked a ball around, did a puzzle occasionally or played a board game, but certainly not imaginative play as far as I'm aware and we wouldn't have wanted parents to play with us - children played together. I found it difficult to witness from her because it didn't suit her and stifled my children's play style as she was very directive and unimaginative.
Either way this isn't a thread about playing with children but about the loud running commentary on their every move done in an odd, loud, childish voice, over enthusiastic exclaiming, whooping and applauding, and generally non stop adult loudness accompanying the presence of perfectly inoffensive young children.