Dirty Little Secret

I’ve hardly ever had a job that didn’t involve kids. Babysitter, nanny, teacher, tutor. . .MOM. I like kids. I do.

But, um, I don’t really like playing with them.

I love watching them play while I also watch TV or check my email. I love teaching them new things. I love reading to them. I love cuddle time. I’ll play active games, or sing songs willingly. I like going to the park and story time and other outings.

But playing princess dolls and trains? Not so much.

I feel like I just came out or admitted an addiction. “Hi, my name is Jerseygirl and I don’t like playing.”

“Hi Jerseygirl!”

It’s not so much that I DISlike playing with my kids. It’s that I get bored. I’m the kind of person who likes to read and watch TV at the same time. I like to check my email when I’m on the phone. I also like to read and/or watch TV and/or check Facebook while I play princess dolls. Because making the appropriate responses during Ironflower’s stories? Not so interesting. While she’s very creative artistically and when she’s telling a story, the princesses tend to do the same thing. Over and over. And over and over again.

Once Hot Guy asked me who had taught Lovebug to crash his trains and cars. Because we don’t let him see violent stuff and because this was before he’d started preschool, Hot Guy wondered how his little boy had learned to stage crashes.

I hated telling him that I had taught our innocent little boy to crash things because I got bored pushing them around and around. Strangely enough, Lovebug no longer wants me to play trains with him. It’s almost like he doesn’t trust me with all of his expensive Thomas toys.

Sometimes I imagine Ironflower on the therapist’s couch lamenting, “And every time my mom played with me, she had to watch Ugly Betty or Top Chef too. Now I think I’m boring and that’s why I have 87 piercings.” But then I think about how much therapy she’ll need if I starting banging my head against a wall while we’re playing, so I’m reasonably sure that I’m doing the lesser of the two evils.

What do you think?