On Being a Playful Father
Even when you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders
I used to be a playful father. And I’m learning to be one again, even though my children are less and less prone to silliness and imagination as they’ve grown older. I’m trying to be one again. I think as fathers we have a temptation toward stoicism. There’s a narrative we can tell ourselves to justify a stone-cold face and a closed-off demeanor: “I’m busy providing for you all. I’m carrying the weight of this family on my shoulders. You are free to play because of me, but you can’t expect me to go blackberrying with you. I have to work and clean and rest and worry.” As excuses go, it has some heft to it, because it’s true. If I don’t pay the bills, things fall apart. If I don’t pay attention to all the details of the household, the center will not hold. Mere anarchy will be loosed upon the calendar if I don’t keep up with everyone’s activities. In all this, who has time for any silliness? Any joy? Any humor? At best, we can watch a TV show together and make some corporation be imaginative and humorous for us. But for a father to set aside his worries about finances and work drama and politics and everything else and use his imaginal space to be playful? That’s asking a lot. It’s asking him to not just to stop working or worrying all the time, but to assume something about the cosmos: that God is in control, that we are free to rest from our labor, that God has blessed us with good gifts, and that it delights him when we playfully delight in his creation.
Playfulness can get worked out of us as adults. Technique, the maximizing of efficiency in every sphere of human activity (paraphrasing Jacques Ellul) cannot abide playfulness because by its nature the latter is inefficient. As adults we’re encouraged to find more and more efficient ways to use our time at work and at home until we feel ill at ease when we aren’t being productive. Even our use of distracting technologies has a hurried and efficient element to them. We want to quickly and effortlessly see all the content now. The older we get, the more society trains us to be highly efficient in everything we do, which is not always bad, but one side effect is that we can struggle to be playful, we can struggle to turn off technique when we get home and just be.
The concept of playfulness involves the imagination, wonder, joy, and rest. It is dynamic, a give-and-take, a letting-be, an adventure. At its heart, playfulness accepts that God has created the world good, and God desires us to delight in his creation—which includes each other’s company, and that God is providentially caring for us so that we have the freedom to rest and play. Of course this doesn’t mean that a father has no responsibility to provide for his family, it just means that in addition to that responsibility, he has the freedom and right to rest in God’s providential hand and delight in God’s creational gifts.
In other words, it delights God when fathers act silly with their kids instead of stoically brooding over the future in the Laz-Y-Boy.1 It shows virtues of courage and faith and hope. You are modeling for your children the reality that the darkness of this world, the effects of the Fall, do not have the last say. That the story we are living in is not a Tragedy, but a Comedy that ends in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. And so it’s appropriate and good for us to laugh. To sing silly songs together. To make up silly voices. To have ridiculous inside jokes as a family. To make up voices for the pets. To lovingly tease one another. To play games with one another. To make up stories with one another. To play.
Fathers who believe they will lose their respect if they are playful have no understanding of how respect is earned and held. They have confused power and control and fear with respect and honor. Children will respect and honor you more when they see that you love them enough to be silly sometimes, so long as you set boundaries. Where they will get confused is when you act silly when you are trying to discipline or correct them. But if you demonstrate to them that you can be both serious and silly at the appropriate times, they will trust and respect you more.
For some of us, technique or addictions to devices or the worries and cares of this life have made playfulness feel too difficult, out of character, or even scary—the fear being silly, what if they don’t accept my playfulness? The imagination is like any other muscle, it must be exercised. Humor must be practiced. Silliness must be embraced. If you are a father who recognizes that you are not playful enough, that you have let other things rob your family of your sense of wonder and joy, then I would encourage you to do a few things.
First, pray that God will give you trust in him, to relieve you of your worries, to set aside your email, to put down your phone, to be fully present so you can be playful.
Second, dare to be silly. Tickle someone. Make a dad joke or twelve. Act courageously despite how you feel. You may still feel worried about work or the state of the world, but push those things aside and choose to be present and love your family.
Third, respond to their playfulness. I suspect that your family is already a bit playful and you have just not been a part of it. You have closed yourself off from participating. A central aspect of playfulness is the dynamic of give-and-take, of responding and offering back. Join in!
When a father is playful, he can carry the emotional weight of a household, changing it from burdened and cranky from a day at school and work to joyful and lighthearted. Alternatively, when a father chooses to be stoic and cling to his work and his devices, he can perpetuate the dark mood or even make it worse. I don’t say this to shame fathers or anyone for having a bad day and not having the strength to help change the mood of the family. I’ve certainly been there plenty of times myself. I’m merely pointing out that in family dynamics we do have influence over each others’ emotions. We can stir each other up to love and good works or bring each other down with cynicism and criticism. And a cranky and tired family who is met with a playful father can sometimes be radically changed for the evening.
There is something lovely about a father who can bring himself to be silly and playful. And there is something tragic about a father who is so caught up in himself and the cares and addictions of the world that he cannot be silly and playful. Godly fathers should strive for playfulness. The world needs more joy. It is a very dark place.
After writing all this, let me say that I don’t mean to imply that mothers don’t have an obligation to be playful either. I think it’s just that I think fathers struggle harder to break that mask and be humorous, and yet when they are playful, it means a great deal.
From this new dad, thank you!
Love this post, and I think there's an additional application to the way we as parents approach our kids' activities, particularly youth sports. At their core, sports = play, and the excessive professionalism and pressure can easily squeeze the "play" out of them. If baseball, volleyball, dance...whatever doesn't feel fun to the child, doesn't feel like play, but feels like their job or a chore, get them out or start modeling play for them as it relates to the sport. Lower your voice, lower your expectations, cut back the frequency, and just. play.