Playful Parenting: An exciting new approach to raising children

I have heard of the practice of playful parenting in my circles, and had a marginal idea of what that meant. I recently grabbed this book, Playful Parenting, at a local Goodwill. Now, I am only about 25 pages in so I haven’t really gotten to the meat and potatoes of it but the gist looks to me like instead of yellin’ and screamin’ to get your way (remind you of anyone? LOL), turn it into something fun, positive and memorable. I hope to one day finish the darn book and write a little review for y’all here 🙂 In the meantime, I wanted to share my revelatory  ‘playful parent’ experience from my dinner table last night…

My 2 1/2 year old was what everyone called a great eater. She would eat lots of food, with a great variety and sophisticated palate. Now- not so much. When she is hungry she asked for a few staples:

1. Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
2. Yogurt
3. Quesadilla
4. Smoothie
5. Snack (crackers, cheese and the like)

While this IS NOT my daughter Marlowe, this is the very reaction to lima beans she had- NO! 🙁

I asked Marlowe if she wanted to see Mommy catch the lima bean in her mouth. So I threw one in the air (like popcorn) and caught it in my mouth. We cheered and clapped. She laughed and asked for more (BTW- since she had been crying and upset she actually signed for more. That’s how she still uses her Baby Signs :))  Back to the topic at hand. So I did a few more and then asked if I could throw one at her to see if she could catch it. She wasn’t so sure. I mean, they were STILL lima beans. So the first one took some verbal prying to get her mouth open wide enough to actually warrant a throw. But soon she caught on and I made the first one. She thought it was hilarious! I then took my turn before trying with her again. It was working!! She was eating the loathsome lima beans 🙂 I made sure to miss a few, also (on purpose, of course LOL) which she also thought was fun. But, in the end she ate the 5 friggin lima beans. Success. With play.

Have you been a playful parent lately? Please share with us!