Parenting philosophy is a lot like fashion: if you wait long enough, everything comes back into style. Looks like our friend Christie Mellor was on the cutting edge of a trend that might emerge from latest reseach indicating that playing with your kids is not only not the natural order of things, but it might not even be very good for them. Which means it could very well be that my exasperated pleas to "go play. With anything. With my makeup. In my wedding dress. I don't care, just GO AWAY" mean I'm doing exactly what nature intended.
One problem with the whole "play with your kids" directive, it seems, is that parents feel guilty if they aren't really into it. And of course, guilty parents are crappy ones, because getting back to biological basics doesn't mean shaking off centuries of accumulated pop-psychology wisdom. And another problem is that kids raised with the modern idea that they need to be played with by their caregivers grow up spoiled and unable to entertain themselves. Which...yes.
I'm going to go on a limb here though, and say that balance is probably the key.
