Have always been pleasantly surprised at how kids play, how they make a game out of nothing at all, how they make up the rules – and then modify them – as the game develops.

All this without any training. No adult supervision.

As adults – and especially as parents, we think that we know it all (as compared to the kids) – and that we have to “educate” our kids on our “way of life”.

As a parent, every incident is an opportunity to reinforce a particular life-lesson:

“See? I *told* you to be careful”

I was wondering if any of the kids could articulate their “way of life” for adults, what would they say?

Here goes my shot at their way of life:

No rules: We don’t need well-defined rules to play a game. We will make them up as we go. Then negotiate and re-negotiate the rules. And that works just fine for us – even if we do sulk occasionally when the rules don’t go our way. No limits: Why does cricket have to be played with a bat and a ball? A rolled-up piece of paper and my hand will do just fine, Thank you. We love a lush green playground – but the space in the living room works well too. We will define and re-define our own games. No enemies: We will have fights. We will hit each other. We will call each other rude names. Very rude ones. But we will still call each other to play the next morning. And we forget our fights within minutes. Sometimes within seconds. No end: So what if we just travelled the whole day and were about to doze off a few minutes ago? There is no end to play. We want to play more – and then some more. And we always have the energy to play. No ROI: So what if the amusement park we like is 2 hours away – and if we leave now, we will only get 30 minutes to play. We don’t calculate fun as a Return on Investment. If we can have fun, then it is worth any investment. No goals!: We play because we want to have fun. Not to get fit, not to play for the country or represent the school, not to lose weight! While having fun, if any of that happens….cool. All Fun: Fun doesn’t mean that we have to be laughing, giggling and shouting. When we are fully engaged with our friends, stretched to our limits and know how to play our game – we have fun. Wonder how life would change if we had these rules for the adult “way of life”! 🙂