AIBU to refuse to play "fairy doctors" for the millionth time?

[olivesandolives]

I'm a sahm, picked dd up from pre school and as soon as we get home she asks to play "fairy doctors". We've played this all week and I just can't do it, I offered alternatives, play doh, drawing, bricks, puzzles, anything but bloody fairy doctors! She got quite upset but I held my ground and now she's sulking.

I'm tired, her little brother starts the day at 5am and by Friday afternoon I'm done! I've now stuck the tv on.

She LOVES pretend play, but it is THE most draining game ever!

‘Christmas Eve’ is one of my favourite games at the moment as it means lying down under a blanket pretending to be asleep whilst Santa comes.

My favourite game was police and burglars. DD was the policeman and I was the burglar. I’d be put in jail (on the couch) and DD would guard me to make sure I didn’t escape. Obviously us jail birds have to fill our time inside, so I’d be allowed books or tv for good behaviour I was a Very Good Prisoner.

Personally I love pretend play but we all enjoy different bits of parenthood and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that!! I think I was quite a late developer as a child and I was sad to have to leave pretend play behind, so having a DC has been an excuse for a walk down memory lane. On the other hand, baking with a preschooler always leaves me wanting to bake my own head, and don't get me started on the baby stage...

I could deal with pretend play for about 15 min. It was only imaginary play for DD as i was always told who to be and what to do or say although the script was the same everyday For me baking had a finite ending so much easier. Also i have a creative job so i liked to have something tangeable to show for an afternoon at home even if it was fairy cakes or a loo roll fashioned into a dragon!! DS entertained himself without much input, although created far more havoc around the house. I would still rather have dealt with broken china or unwanted paint on the wall than pretend to be a farm animal for an hour a day!!😂

Haha relieved to hear everyone else's dc are rigid about scripts and roles etc. We've been playing pirates for about 2 years now, with themes of walking the plank and falling into the ships mess mostly. Lots of ever changing rules about who are goody and baddy pirates and what the punishments will be. Ive tried directing treasure hunts from the sofa to no avail sadly - i always have to be pushed off said sofa as a punishment. It exhausts me!

I didn't even blink at the PP being a bathroom door incorrectly. It made perfect sense to me that there is a right way to be a bathroom door and she just wasn't fulfilling the brief.

I've been brainwashed

These are so funny. We have to play a santa game but only in the bath. 4 yo and his long suffering older brother are elves and I am santa. Youngest "oh no - we forgot to deliver presents to (inserts his and brothers name here) We must find something " We then wrap 2 rubber ducks in flannels and I ride the sleigh with them till we crash and then deliver the presents. They then turn into two sleeping boys and I am mum and I wake them and they open the gifts.

I absolutely love this thread, I’ve cried with laughter all the way through! Honourable mentions to Bathroom Door/Jewellering shop/Robbers Dog/Cod & Washing basket 😂

Mine always wants to play mums and dads. Apparently my offer to be the mum who is emptying the dishwasher and cooking dinner is not good enough.

LOL. I feel your pain and my youngest child is 20 years old!

OP next time I think the fairy will require to be put into a medically induced coma and remain still and quiet for a very long time

sorry place marking as I love this thread. mine are adults now so it like a step back in time/

My 11 year old ds and i still role play. He's an only.
Sometimes he's a bad boy who's stolen from Tesco and I'm the security guard who has to chase him.

Or i have to pretend to wake him up for school on a weekend and yell at him that he'll be late for school. This is a favourite of his. Only on non school days, mind.

Today I was a greedy neighbour who popped next door while they were having a bbq. I had to scrounge for leftovers.

I realise how mad it all sounds written down here.

I’ve lowered my 6yo’s expectations to the point where she says “Can we play schools and you’re the teacher? It’s okay, you don’t have to do anything.” The guilt I feel at the low standard of parenting she expects is horrendous.

I deal with it by inviting MIL to come and stay, because she is happy to pretend play for hours, the weird wonderful woman. Maybe I should start hiring her out to you lot.

Ahh, fairy doctors and mole family sound lovely.

I hated pretend play too and felt massively guilty at the time but now I'm sad they've grown out of it. I did try to play enthusiastically for a short time and then escape

I'm a bad mum. In our house you can run through the kitchen then through the lounge then back into the hall in a circle. My ds always wants to play monsters by running round and round with me chasing him. After a couple of laps I usually sneak into the cupboard for as long as I can get away with. Tires him out a treat!

I feel your pain! DD is 3 and just recently got a lot more into imaginative play. I hate it! We have cat doctors at the moment, not a vet, she is dressed as a cat but treats humans.

Great thread! Particularly enjoying pondering exactly what sort of game requires mum to be a bathroom door, and more crucially, how it was wrong

My cousins and I lived at opposite ends of the country and we used to have a game of doctors which we just picked up every summer or Christmas. Me, my oldest cousin (a girl) and my slightly younger sister were a very eager team of emergency medics who wanted my (boy) cousin to compliantly perform a number of roles including heart attack victim, someone in a coma and someone who had had a bash on the head and couldn’t remember who they were.

He, selfishly, was only interested in being dramatically gunned down (complete with loud sound effects), then dying before the ambulance could get there to thwart the eager team of medics. On the odd occasion we used to overpower convince him to lie down in bed and have some medicine, he would spit the water at us and miraculously come back to life, usually before gunning us all down. Every. Time.

DS is 2 so not quite there yet but omg I have to do the lift in his garage approx 11 million times a day. “Oop top mummy!”

Being the customer in a restaurant and being told gleefully that every thing you order is off. Ordering imaginary cream tea then being told you can’t e en have that makes you desperate for an actual cream tea

I used to offer to be the client at the fairy hairdresser and let her draw on me with makeup and comb my hair while I lay in a chair. Win win!

This thread is adorable

I was never into playing even when I was a kid myself, I was much more interested in reading or climbing a tree than make believe games, so as a mother I failed spectacularly at this. There is some silver lining to my two ASD kids as they don’t care either the other two had their dad for that nonsense.

My dd is now 20 but I still think back to days where I used to silently scream into my 50th pretend cup of tea of the day while dressed in fairy wings and a plastic tiara. God forbid I didn't make an mmmm sound after each sip.

Oh OP, this made me laugh today!

I have all boys and I’d swap you Fairy Doctors today as I’ve had to sit around the sand pit in the garden playing Dinosaur wars where one side are dinosaurs, the other side every type of soldier/army type figure and the aim of the game seems to be something between burying all the dinosaurs or knocking over everything and it is absolutely exhausting and frankly boring!! My legs get cramped from squatting around the sand box and then I get shouted at for not playing it properly!

Actually love this thread, much more than imaginative play!

Can we play schools and you’re the teacher? It’s okay, you don’t have to do anything.

Bless her 😂😂

My son will use practically anything as a prop to talk, e.g. a fork, a carrot, a (toy) road sign, by saying 'hiya, I'm a fork/carrot etc', then you have to just be like 'oh hi fork. You're a nice fork aren't you.' Then he will say something like 'got sharp spikes', to which you have to say 'yes, you have got sharp spikes haven't you'. If I ignore him he will just start shouting mama over and over until we make eye contact and then it starts again. Or being a toy animal/vehicle. That sort of stuff bores the shit out of me 😩😴

He also likes pretending he is an animal, he's been a mouse for a week, a kitten, a puppy, an elephant (he likes to use his trunk when he's tidying up, meaning he just touches his toy to his nose and nuts it into the box 😂). When we're out and about he likes walking into lampposts and saying he's stuck. He just keeps marching on the spot like a robot til you rescue him. He also likes to just stop dead as if his foot is glued to the floor, and he'll be making straining noises as if he's trying to pull it free, you have to go back and pretend his foot is stuck and it takes a good few pulls to get it free 😂 Oh, and he likes us to be chickens laying eggs, and go around squatting making happy Mrs chicken sounds. I actually don't mind doing all this most of the time, although I save my happy Mrs chicken for in house 😂

Oh and we've just started toilet training, when he's finished he looks and says 'I made an animal. Look, look!'.So I have to stare at his pee for a bit and be like 'oh wow, cool animal...'. Thankfully he hasn't tried to play with those animals.

DD, at 17 months, has started to play "nap." This involves fetching a pillow and a blanket and lying down with her eyes closed--for about fifteen seconds, or just long enough to read an interesting headline but not long enough to read the article. Then it's back to endless repetitions of Pete the sodding Kitty.

I remember my ex NDN telling me her grand daughter was heavily into playing ‘Madams’. Despite the slightly salacious and interesting name the reality was her being offered help in shops, the hairdresser, etc. ‘Madam, can I help you’.