Play with me
Or, how the best life lessons come from the smallest (persistent) teachers
“Can you play with meeeee? Pleeeeeaaaaase?”
A squeeze usually follows the request. Not of her little hand around mine. Not of her eyes shutting closed in a whole body plea.
I feel the squeeze inside me every time I say no.
No, sorry. I need to get ready for work.
No, sorry. I have to cook dinner.
No, sorry. I have to wash the dishes.
No, sorry. I have to make the beds.
She’ll ask me again and the squeeze will tighten as I repeat a variation of my answer. I can’t, as much as I want to, I just can’t. Eventually, she’ll leave with an “Ohhhhh”, and the heaviness of letting her down will be swept to the side by the necessity to keep moving.
But the other morning, my four-year-old changed the script. She entered the bathroom, magnetic blocks in hand, radiating a hopeless optimism that’s yet to be dampened by an understanding of “Mondays” and the 40-hour-a-week/45-year slog it signals.
“Mum, can you play with me please?
“Pleeeaaaaase?”
After telling her I couldn’t play, I had to get ready for work, her reply came quickly, heavy with the attitude. "Mum. You always say that.”
Her words were like a backhand to the head.
She was right. I always say that.
“Moving into the play state of our nervous system is a bit like going to a gym that makes us psychologically more flexible, adaptable, and resilient.” - Jessica Maguire
The thing is, I don’t feel guilty about working full-time. I’m lucky to be in a career I love. My mum sacrificed her own creativity for a practical career that promised good pay and longevity. She had no choice. Or rather, that was her choice, so she could be the first to break free of her father’s dictatorial reign and the provincial town that had suffocated her youth. A big reason I am where I am today is because my mum created the foundations that made it possible. I want to keep opening up those opportunities for my daughter too. And now that I’m much better at setting work boundaries (read all about my former burnout-junkee ways), work isn’t the issue.
The real problem was that life had become a long list of shit that needed to get done, and any kind of play had taken a back seat. It took my daughter's constant demands (and the sobering realisation that our window for play is shrinking as she gets older and I become less cool in her eyes) to make me realise.
The need for play doesn’t end in our childhood, says Jessica Maguire, a former physiotherapist turned vagus nerve1 educator. “Research has shown that without play, adults are less curious, less imaginative and lose a sense of joyful engagement in daily living.”
Sounds a lot like adulting.
Of course, the antidote to all of this is incorporating more play into our lives. Think of play as a gym for your mind, says Jessica, “that makes us psychologically more flexible, adaptable, and resilient.”
She says that when we’re engaged in play, our nervous system experiences a shift as we move through two key states: mobilisation and recovery. Mobilisation is when the sympathetic nervous system kicks in – think increased heart rate, heightened alertness and a surge of energy.
This is followed by the crucial recovery phase, which involves the parasympathetic nervous system. This is where the body returns to a state of calm – heart rate slows, muscles relax, and we regain a sense of equilibrium. This back-and-forth between mobilisation and recovery is what makes play so beneficial. It trains the nervous system to effectively manage both stress and relaxation, improving our overall resilience and adaptability.
Jessica adds: “Engaging and connecting with others through play also brings a release of oxytocin which can reduce inflammation, so it can improve pain and promote wellbeing. Peak performance also arises from this state: it gives us focus, and enhances our endurance and reaction time.”
Moving in and out of play is natural when we’re young but life tends to sap the instinct out of us. It usually starts at school when we’re forced to override the urge to move around to regulate our nervous system by staying in our seats all day, says Jessica. This is made worse by more screen time, financial pressure and all the responsibilities of getting older.
Now, if you don’t have a sassy four-year-old hounding you to drop the to-do list, how do you know you’re not getting enough play? There are signs, says Jessica.
“When you face a stressor and you notice:
your energy plummet
your brain’s foggy
you’re fatigued
you lack motivation
you can’t take action
you feel a collapse in your nervous system
this means your immobilisation response, aka your shut-down or freeze state, may be in overdrive.”
The good news, according to Jessica, is we don't need to spend an hour playing to get the benefits.
“It can be as simple as popping on some music and moving. We can add it to the end of our workout at the gym by bouncing on a fitball. We can sing in the car,” she says. “Often adults feel self-conscious when they begin playing again so getting started with our children or pets is a great way to start.”
As for me, I’ve added (even more of) a buffer when I get ready in the morning so that I can put down my eye shadow to buy a rainbow ice-cream from my local ice-cream maker (read: a cone made of magnetic blocks from my four-year-old). I’m also looking into a new weekly activity (Muay Thai or a reggaeton class? Maybe both?). I’m going out with girlfriends again and I’ve started meeting my husband for lunch during the week (simple but nice to hang out with just the two of us).
There are still times when I have to tell my four-year-old that I can’t play, but you know what?
She’s never again told me that I “always say that”.
Until the next 3am Huddle,
Lizza x
The featured expert, Jessica Maguire, is a Vagus Nerve educator, but what exactly is the vagus nerve? Jessica explains:
“The vagus nerve is the epicentre of the mind-body connection. When we see its anatomy running from the base of the brain to the heart and lungs and also spreading out like a vine through the abdomen to touch almost every organ in kind, we understand its three functions:
1. It regulates our emotions. The branch running from our brain to our heart helps us cope with and recover from anxiety and hopelessness.
2. It balances our organs and systems, especially our digestive system. This is why anxiety makes things like IBS so much worse and we also see the same with inflammation.
3. It's the system that allows us to attune and connect with others. This is why the people around you impact your nervous system so much.
We used to think of our nervous system as having just two branches, a bit like an accelerator (the sympathetic nervous system) and a brake (the parasympathetic nervous system) in a car.
We now know that there are two brakes and the dorsal branch of our vagus nerve can drop us into feeling depressed, numb, disconnected and dissociated. This is like pulling on the handbrake to stop and it explains why people may freeze or shut down in the face of highly stressful events.
The interesting part about the vagus nerve is that 80 per cent of its communication runs from the body up to the brain. When we're really stressed this is why what's happening in our body has the greatest impact on how we feel.”
Oh I love this. I, too, feel the 'play with me' squeeze, especially with my middle child, who just wants to play all the time. Funnily enough, one of the games I quickly gave into this morning when trying to get jobs done was magnatile meals - ours became green jelly sandwiches. He was delighted.
So easy to forget we need to play, too, and how easy it can be to incorporate it into our lives - I'm always amazed by how much better I feel after putting some boppy music on instead of a podcast when I'm getting jobs done, for example. Dancing while you tidy is instantly more fun than learning.
Oh! And I forgot to add:
* listening to Spice Girls on the way to work (there might be some contained dancing going on too)
* buying a better air fryer/oven so that I spend less time cooking and more time playing
* playing “eye, spy with my Frozen eye” with my daughter where we describe characters from Frozen who the other has to guess (she still hasn’t grasped the concept of eye spy so we’re going with this)
* singing on the way home from day care pick up and seeing how high and low we can go (sorry, neighbours)