“I don’t want to play that game anymore.”
Maya Schofield, October 18, 2001
It is four p.m. and my five year-old daughter Maya and I are in the car, on our way to the supermarket to get some last minute groceries for dinner. I have just picked her up from school and am heading into the “after-school” phase of the day. Throughout the day I have shifted roles and switched gears several times: from the frantic early morning rush to get child, signed home reading packs, and lunches to school, to the morning adult education class I teach, to my exam preparations in the afternoon, and now to the childcare/supper/bedtime routine that in some circles is called the “Mothering Hour” and in other circles is called the “Disaster Hour.” I am preoccupied as I weave through traffic, but I try to be attentive, even interested, in playing yet another “I spy” game with Maya.
“Why don’t we play using the first letter of the
alphabet?”
I suggest.
“No, that’s boring,”
she replies. “I
want to use colours.”
“But using letters is a good way to help you read,”
I assert and then pause. I surprise myself. Why should it matter whether we
use letters or not? What difference does it make? Why am I agreeing to play
a game when I am feeling tired and distracted?
By now my daughter is thinking about other things. “It’s
OK,”
she says, “I don’t want to play that game anymore.”