Play and the Middle

 

There are many aspects around being an adult kid, which if you're like many of us it's taken time to come to an acceptance of and while many have been talked about here, there is one I'd like to introduce to you, play.

Play is something we associate very much with our childhood, something that regardless of our gender or disabilities we all have in common that outside of school was the means we socialized at home or the playgrounds in our communities.

If you've struggled since with these things they also can be of use to you to relearn those skills that can crossover into your more adult roles.

Playing is how we learned about each other, learned new skills from each other be it building a model, skipping or just how to be a friend, looking out for others.

We felt good going out in the snow building snowmen or tossing snowballs at each other and I still do actually!

So whenever I've been with my adult kid friends one of things we program into our meet up are various play opportunities starting with an ice breaker and one of our favourites is working on a jigsaw together which gives an opportunity to not to just solve the puzzle which is fun but to start working together, establishing a good co-operative feel from the get go.

Play can be both individual as well as group centred like for instance you may enjoy making Lego's small kits say of a Helicopter up from the supplied parts, which can help with develop your hand to eye co-ordination and ability to concentrate too.

Within play you can create stories using your own imagination either by actually role playing (Dungeons and Dragons or playing 'School' anyone?) or making up adventures for your Teddies dolls which I find pretty good at getting rid of 'adult' stress.

Finding anew that sense of imagination is magical.

Another one you can do by yourself or as a group is...wait for it...colouring, something that's on the up at least in the UK with some more older age group colouring books being published but if, like me you love Disney, bliss can equal going to the local store and getting yourself one (my new one is Frozen) and a pack of pencils (or crayons).

I find it very relaxing.

We often bring traditional board games such as Mousetrap with us dividing people into teams as we throw the dice over the course of a few hours and dice have this habit of not quite going the way you want so may have to wait until you get the right number.

Space permitting you could put together small train set powered or even the chunky push along sort pretending you're along the Canadian Pacific climbing the inclines and going over bridges, train whistles optional!

Or maybe you like playing with toy cars creating an adventure as you go long as they all come from the same place inside you, your 'little' side, and just letting it out in a setting that's comfortable I find removes layers of emotional constipation so you feel more at ease with yourself.

Although I don't for personal disability based reasons, there's no reason not to rig up an Xbox or PS4 and have several of you just sat around playing while your daddies or mentors are either having more groan up fun or just discussing things between themselves, looking out as most of our dads did in case we started to get into trouble.

Your playing then can actually be pretty good for them too, giving them a break while their littles are all together doing their own thing.

Naturally play can take place out of doors too with a bit of planning and consideration for those not in the lifestyle, where you could go to a park and fly kites, have a kick about playing soccer or maybe baseball while sharing food together.

Wasn't that the kind of fun you just loved? Well if so, let's just get on with recreating it cos there's no reason to do without it.