I have recently begun a short course in playwork. I have wanted to study this qualification since I was at primary school. My favourite few weeks of every year were the ones where I went to a summer playscheme, run by my occupational and physiotherapist. It was arranged as a way for children in the town with learning and physical disabilities to be together and feel a sense of belonging and capability. I was actually one of the more physically able children there and it made me come alive. It made me see how essential play was to happiness and togetherness. It made me feel free to be supported in everything I wanted to try and do. I was never once told in this place that I couldn’t. It was heaven.

As I sat in the classroom last week, we watched a video of children playing outside. They’re asked to describe what they love about playing. Repeatedly, the word they used was “free”. “You’re free to be with your friends.” “You’re free to be yourself.” “You’re free to forget your worries.” I was grinning to myself, because I remembered feeling that way. I could imagine my 6 year-old daughter giving similar responses.

Then, I felt several kicks of sadness.

Are my girls free to play? I wondered.

We’d been discussing how play in the 1980s & 1990s was very different to the technology-laden play of today. In the 1980s & 1990s, we’d said, kids were out playing on the streets, only heading home when shouted in for tea.

The truth is, I remember seeing this play going on. Neighbourhood kids played on the street, playing Kerby or riding bikes.

Not me. I was rarely allowed to play out on the street. My mum worried too much that I’d lose my balance and get hit by a car and I never learnt to ride a bike. So I’d be sat on the other side of the garden gate, hemmed in, staring out and wishing I could be as free as my friends. It might sound dramatic, but that gate felt like prison bars. I was a lonely child.

And that kick of sadness, thinking of how fears of safety today keep kids indoors, made me wonder if my lack of experience of play had influenced my part in that fear. Did my lack of memories of being a free kid, playing out like everybody else mean that I was keeping my own children from these experiences too?

The course leader spoke of how, at outdoor playscheme provisions, adults seemed unwilling to even let their inquisitive children stray from the brick pathways. I thought about how sad that was for children who just wanted to explore. Then I had to realise, that I probably would have been one of those adults. Not because I don’t believe children should be free to play, I do, absolutely. But my fear, as a physically disabled parent, is that I cannot keep my children safe.

This realisation was devestating. I believe whole-heartedly in the importance of play, because the chance to be with other kids was lacking in my own childhood and I grew up to be an insecure, socially anxious adult. I don’t want that to be the case for any other child.

But, I had to realise, for someone that plans to build her career on the importance of play as an experience and therapeutic process for children, play is lacking in my toolbox as a mum.

As we age and become jaded by the realities of adulting, we lose the ability to play. We forget the importance of it, how it frees us, how it teaches us. I know all of this and yet, I have to admit, I am a terrible imaginative playmate. I used to be amazing, because I used to be a child.

But as an adult, as a mum, I am spent. I do not seem able to immerse myself in the imagination or whims of my children. I try. I really do, but I tire easily. Am I really cut out for a career in play? Because, honestly, I feel it has become such a point of interest for me because my inner child feels that she has lost out. My adult self feels unequipped to provide her with those opportunities and if I cannot provide them to myself, stuck in time as that part of me is, how can I successfully provide them to others?

I shared these realisations with Kev. Was I keeping our daughters from the true freedoms of play by not instigating or allowing them time and space, to scrape their knees etc? How could I instgate play when it felt so unnatural to my adult self?

His advice was sound. To be honest, I should have known the answer. I have a degree led on the principle for goodness sake.

“Don’t be an adult.” he said. “Let our girls be your teacher. Don’t play with them… ask them to show you how.”

Boom. There it is.

I honestly believe adults are largely rubbish at play for that reason. Life means we forget how. But not children. They are right there, living it and it is the very best thing for them. So, I’m off to ask my daughters to be my very best teachers, because Mummy’s forgotten how to play.