Music Machine

When people meet us for the first time, they often ask what Kai likes to play. Sometimes, the question is asked in the context of a potential play date between Kai and another child.

I think they are thinking that we would say something like video games, or cars, or sports, or other things that most boys like to play with.

Kai really doesn’t like any of that. And, I always have a hard time answering the question.

The things he does when he plays are hard to describe, and, shall we say, unusual. And that is because he often makes up his own play from various thoughts he has in his head.

A good example of this happened just the other day. He had the idea to create a “music machine” and then proceeded to make it by lining up various toy musical instruments. Once the "machine" was made, he rolled things like marbles and drum sticks along the instruments to make music sounds.

Kai has a very active imagination. His mind is constantly thinking of new things. We try to practice the Floortime model of play-therapy that involves following the child’s lead, but it is sometimes it is hard for me to keep up with Kai as I am not nearly as creative as he is.

It also makes it hard to answer the question “What does your son like to play?” How do you succinctly describe this to another parent? Even if you could describe it, it is not the kind of thing that is easy to work into a play date with another child.

But Kai is very happy when he is playing like this. And I am happy to see how imaginative he is.

And maybe that is all that really matters.