Today I discovered Magic Painting courtesy of my dad. 

There's a man who clearly knows what he's doing. 

He bought the kids a colouring book full of grey images that you colourize by dipping a paintbrush in water and only water! 

How amazing is that! No mess. No multi coloured kids, no need for a plastic splash mat. Just a small pot of water. Water I can do. And, this is actually a moment where a capital AND is justified.. AND, It's a quiet activity where both are SAT DOWN and have exactly the same, so DON'T ARGUE.! 

It feels like I've discovered gold for the price of silver! 

There's not always fun in fun at home. They start doing something fun then it turns into (a) mayhem. (b) tears (c) arguing (d) blood (e) mess (f) a fight - I think i could actually continue all the way to 'z' with potential endings to play time. 

They play 'babies' a lot - it's a brilliant excuse for the 7 yr old to boss the 3 yr old around. And she gets a dummy in him.

The dummy my actual real baby was meant to have but refuses to comply with. 

But she gets the dummy in him and it's 10 minutes of no loud shouting from him- he has one volume and it's higher than the recommended amount of decibels. So I welcome those 10 intermittent minutes. 

It's alarming when you witness how she treats her 'baby' , I have to question where she's learnt her unique parenting techniques, is it me? Hope not when she got a piece of ribbon from the 'alsorts of crap drawer' in the kitchen and ties him up and ordered him to bark. 

One night this week I got roped into playing 'shops', otherwise known as 'lady payer'.. I love shopping, it's one of my actual hobbies. So when I was asked to come and play I thought 'the hell why not, this should be fun' 

But fun and fun don't go together and it was not fun at all. 

I wasn't allowed to be the shop keeper (lady payer) I had to be the shopper. I was given euros not pounds and I didn't know the exchange rate. It was shit as it happens because my beans, aubergine and egg (which was already fried) came to £15.27.. 

As soon as I bought my goods, I had to hand it over to Barry the BBQ'er who insisted on putting all the food on his toy bbq. I didn't want BBQ'd aubergine but I was having it. Had to fake eat it and everything. 

And then I was completely and utterly bored. This game was crap. No point to it. Stupid, pants game. 

I realised then, that playing isn't for grown ups. Grown ups can get involved in zoos and farms and parks and theme parks but they can not and should not do kids games that kids make up. 

We fail to carry an imagination that brings it to life. Maybe because we look to the reality of the shop or baby situation too much. I get frustrated watching Peppa Pig sometimes. I watched the episode when Peppa goes to Rebecca Rabbits house and they actually live in a rabbit hole and eat nothing but carrots and I just kept thinking 'As If', As if they would be happy living underground and eating nothing but carrots. It annoyed me. Then I saw the hill Peppa lives on and Daddy Pig not once changes gear - seriously, it's a 1 in 1.. It wasn't until someone pointed out that the whole programme is about a family of talking pigs who go to school and work that I realised the whole programme isn't real, it's just made up nonsense. 

The 3 yr old has a game called 'traffic jams'. He lines all his cars up in a line. And that's the game. He always asks me to play with him. I leg it at this point, mainly because I can sit in traffic jams whenever I want. All I have to do is leave the house before 9am or come back at around 5pm, why would I want to be in one when I don't have to??

If I played that game with him, I'd spend the whole time saying 'pissing-hell, how long am I gonna be stuck here. Oh FFS I can't cope in this queue any longer I'm gonna scream' 

So, I've decided that quality time doesn't mean engaging in games concocted by the mind of a random 3 year old.

It means taking them places where I can pretend to be a child myself but use my kids as the excuse for my ridiculous behaviour.. The sort of behaviour that without kids around would look plain sectionable!

Release your inner child with an actual child but leave the fake shopping to the miniature euro horders..