I see my children playing for hours making castles in the sandbox, parking lots of matchbox cars, and drawings that grow from scribbles to recognizable shapes and people. Childhood is joyful. There is a lot of free time to explore and play. Responsibility and worries aren’t as great, there is more room to be creative and playful. I can look back on my own childhood with happy memories of hours spent playing outside climbing trees, of reading book after book, and flying in the stars in pretend spaceships.

But I don’t think being a child is always fun and games. I have plenty of memories from my own childhood of frustration, disappointment and pain. It can be a hard time of life, with a lot of expectations to learn, and dealing with problems with little experience or emotional capacity. I see my own children in tears as they can’t quite make their drawing look right, they don’t understand why we have to leave a friend’s house, or get in trouble for wrestling their brother or drawing on the walls.

What do I want my children to gain from their childhood? I want them to learn and grown and turn into responsible and righteous people. Sometimes I am frustrated as we face the same problems with little progress. I can feel angry, inadequate as a mother, and even hopeless.

It helps to remind myself that they are children. They want to play and be happy and have yet to develop all the understanding of an adult. I do need to guide them and correct them, but  it is just as important to help them experience the joy of childhood. I want them to look back on their childhood and have more memories of the joy of playing, than to remember time-outs and tears.

So sometimes, I can let things go. Parenting is as much about playfulness as discipline, and is never about being perfect.  When I want my children to do something that they aren’t too interested in, forcing them often accomplishes nothing. It is far more important for a child to experience play and creativity then to always be pushing them to live up to expectations they can’t reach. They will grow and get better, at their own pace and only with gentle guidance.

Right now, it is often better to let them track mud in the house than to stop them from making mud pies, to clean up a big mess of paint with a smile instead of putting a child on time-out, and to go outside and play in the rain instead of getting one more chore done.