THE POWER OF FUN
By Dan Coulter
We tend to remember
extremes: our best days and worst days.
You usually can't control the worst days. Bad stuff happens when it
happens.
But you can make more days some of your family's best days by
recognizing and harnessing the power of fun. It can bring your
family closer, help you teach your kids what you want them to learn
and get you all through tough times.
Just about everyone knows someone who's fun to be around. Maybe
it's an aunt or uncle or someone you've worked with. Someone who
seems to generate laughter and good times.
Picture yourself playing that role for your family.
Maybe you're already a walking fun factory. If not, and this just
doesn't sound like you, hear me out. I'm not talking about a
personality transplant or suggesting that you assume a forced
goofiness. I'm talking about focusing on the part of us all that
enjoys having fun. Wherever you are on the fun scale, you can
probably turn it up a notch.
I have, at different times in my life, been Mr. Fun and a real
downer to be around. Finding ways to snap myself out of a bad mood
became a crucial skill when my kids came into my life. Especially
when I was working long hours and only saw them at the end of the
day and on weekends. I couldn't afford to waste any time with them
moping around.
Every family is different, but let me share a few things we've done
to generate fun.
When my kids were little, I never did learn to completely leave work
pressures at the office, but I'd juice myself up on the way home
thinking about being with them and my wife, Julie.
When I hit the door, I'd pick up both Drew and Jessie and dance
around the hallway, singing a little rapid-fire nonsense song I'd
made up. They got a tremendous kick out of it, and it set a great
tone for the rest of the evening. I found out early that things are
only as special as you make them.
When things are tough or strained, a little fun can help turn things
around. I remember working in my home-office on a weekend and
hearing Julie, calling up the stairs, asking me if I could take some
time and help her. She was dealing with housework and our two
toddler kids and she was more than a bit
exasperated. I grabbed a portable tape recorder and shoved in a
tape of the William Tell Overture, also used as the theme from "The
Lone Ranger" on television. Many of you may recognize this as
standard "rescue" music on old film soundtracks. Anyway, I rushed
down the stairs like a comic book
superhero with the William Tell Overture playing at full blast. I
don't remember what I was working on at the time, but I know putting
it aside and making a big entrance to immediately pitch in on family
matters was a huge hit with Julie and the kids.
Playing family games was fun for us. I think one of the keys to
success is monkeying with the rules so everyone can play. You don't
have to throw the rules out the window, just modify them so young
kids or those with some challenges can fully participate.
It's a hoot to play Scrabble with made-up words allowed - as long as
they're inventive and you make up a fun meaning.
Pictionary, a kind of drawing version of "charades," was our
favorite for a while. My kids still kid me about a duck I drew that
looked like anything but.
One of Julie's real strengths is coming up with great gifts. She
puts real thought into family presents. She also loves to bake and
present the kids with care packages of brownies, cookies, cheese
straws and such. No mama ever showered her kids with more
encouragement than my wife - and I can always count on hearing her
laughing when she's on the phone with Drew or Jessie.
We also had a lot of fun with bedtime stories. My son and daughter
were born 17 months apart, so they were close enough in age to enjoy
many of the same things at the same time.
When Jessie was three, she was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis (CF).
Since that time, she's done a session of physical therapy once or
twice a day to help clear her lungs. For years, Julie would do the
morning session with Jessie and I'd do the evening session. To help
the time go faster, I'd bring
Drew into the room during therapy and tell them both stories.
While the therapy sessions were mandatory, they gave us a chance to
have fun every night during story time. I decided to tape record
the stories so I could offer the kids "reruns" when I felt too tired
to come up with new ideas.
Not that the stories were all original. I borrowed liberally from
any book, movie play, TV show or cartoon I'd ever seen for ideas.
The tape recordings are testaments to how tired I was many nights,
because you can hear me yawn frequently during the stories. But
those recordings are a treasure now.
Not so much for what I'm saying, but for the laughs and questions
and suggestions from my kids that are sprinkled throughout the
soundtrack. There's a story on one tape which features Drew as a
prince and Jessie as a princess. In passing, my voice notes that
Princess Jessie has on a beautiful dress. I move quickly on toward
a peak of adventure when Jessie interrupts and hauls me back. "What
about the dwess?" her little voice chirps. She had her own
priorities. Adventure could, and did, wait for a
detailed description of the princess dress.
The stories featured Jessie's stuffed teddy bear, "Bearly." Bearly
Bear would routinely pop into Jessie's room and lead Jessie and Drew
through a magic door in Jessie's closet to the land of the Bear
King. The Bear King's realm was frequently invaded by evil wizards,
who'd have to be out-smarted and banished by Jessie, Drew and Bearly.
Professional note: Evil wizards are particularly vulnerable to
having dirty socks thrust beneath their noses. It makes them swoon
so you can knock off their wizard hats and cut
them off from their sources of power. You get the idea.
When my wife and I take long car trips, I like to listen to some of
these old tapes and hear Drew and Jessie whoop it up in the
background when an evil wizard gets a particularly smelly sock
shoved in his face at a pivotal point in the story and goes into
hysterics.
So, if you have any flair for story telling, I'd milk the dirty sock
bit for all it's worth. It's killer material for four and
five-year-olds.
And if storytelling's not your forte, no problem. Your local
library is chock-full of great children's books you can read to your
kids. You can even change the names of characters in the books and
substitute your kids' names. Kids love hearing about themselves and
librarians can be a huge help in pointing you toward fun books in
the right age range. If you have more than one child, it's a great
way to help them bond.
When families have a child with a disability, dealing with
disability issues for a son or daughter can suck up a lot of time
and make your other children feel neglected. Including all your
kids in story time can help you wire into their brains that it's fun
to be together. Not to mention the opportunity to reinforce any
other lessons you want to teach in the stories you tell or read.
Having said this, we also found it was important to routinely spend
one-on-one time with each of our kids.
We had a bit of a special situation. After we found out Jessie had
CF, Drew was diagnosed with a series of communications-related
disorders. He finally got a correct diagnosis of Asperger
Syndrome. Even before we knew he had AS, we were trying to address
his special needs. So because both our kids
required extra attention of different sorts, we didn't have a
situation where one got overshadowed by the other's needs.
This didn't feel like a plus at the time. It felt like being in a
ship that was in constant danger of being swamped. But looking
back, giving attention to both kids helped bring them and our family
closer together. And we had a lot of fun along the way. Fun has
made it easier to relate to the kids
when they've gotten frustrated, especially when we've needed to
persuade them to do something for their health or well-being. Fun
is like oil that helps the family gears mesh smoothly.
Fun has been an important factor in our marriage, too. I heard a
statistic the other day that the majority of parents who have kids
on the autism spectrum get divorced. Finding ways to have fun while
you're dealing with overwhelming pressure is like a life preserver
in a storm. It helped save
my wife and I more than once.
Today, Drew and Jessie are both doing well in college. They're
living on their respective campuses and we could not be more proud.
They keep in contact and support each other. We love having them
home on school breaks because they're both so much fun to be around.
And while they deserve every credit for overcoming their challenges,
I like to think that part of the reason they're successful has to do
with story time and mama laughs and poorly drawn ducks and the power
of fun.
Because things are only as special as you make them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dan Coulter is the writer/producer of "MANNERS
FOR THE
REAL WORLD: Basic Social Skills" and other videos for parents and
children.
You can find additional articles on his website:
www.coultervideo.com.
Copyright 2005 Dan Coulter Used By Permission All Rights
Reserved
Some
are the melody, some are the rhythm, some are the harmony