While I ws typing another reply my son is downstairs off school with a cold, I said no tv/ computer etc and he got out an electronics kit and just called me excitedly to show me a circuit he had built then modified!
Being a child and having a few resources he created something more than his construction:
FUN.
A few months ago I was trying to get him to exercise and eat healthier, it became 'fun' when he got his retainer ( mouth brace ) and had to be creative about what he can and can't eat/ drink. We swam until he got bored with the games we made up then his dad took him to a bike shop and let him pick out his first 'real' bike.
And now he's exercising pretty much constantly, riding around the neighbourhood, the dog walks become bike and nature trails, the kids devise complex racing and obstacle games.
And they keep doing it because it's so much FUN.
I never knew the word 'fun' as a child. I don't think my parents knew what it was. They married too early and unhappily, and settled into a daily grind of hard work and heavy drinking.
Getting progressively more grumpy and less playful, being an adult was about being 'serious'.
This is very much part of the culture I grew up in- where are you Portia, was your family like this too?
There was little laughter except of the mocking or sarcastic kind, and virtually no pampering.
Even a visit to the hairdressers was an ordeal, being made to wait then having a style foisted on you for convenience and no idea of 'good service'.
And I reproduced all this in a lot of my adult life too, doing relationships I wasn't enjoying, putting up with bad service, going not hours but months and years without doing anything just because it's fun.
When my son was born I started learning how to play again, and I thought it would stop when I wasn't doing all the mommy reading and making stuff...but it's just changed. I still do loads with him. But also more and more for myself. My creativity is turning into doing things not for posterity or trying to acheive great things, but little poems to make people laugh, painting for no reason other than to play around with colour, listening to music I didn't think I liked before, trying new foods.
It's taken me years to create a life filled with fun, now I want to shout the 'F' word every day!