A handful of strange truths: kids love it when I play with them, I really want to be a mom, I don’t like playing with kids, and I’m terrified of being locked up in a house with them if my own dream comes true. Contradictory? Eh.

“You’d make a great mom,” my fiancé says. I’ve heard it many times before—but inside, I’m not so sure. I’d make a great AUNT, I want to correct him. The truth is that my toddler patience has an expiration date of approximately one hour, some days more, some days less. During that hour, I know how to enchant a child so that they’re giggling themselves into little pretzels, and it’s great, but it also feeds my dread of real parenting. Because invariably, silly-happy pretzel children begin to beg me incessantly for nonstop MORE. They follow me around the house, sniffing me out like beagles if I try to hide in an unused bedroom and get some actual work done. They defy all adult conversations that I so desperately long for, shouting SARAH SARAH LOOK SARAH LOOK AT THIS HEY SARAH over anything I try to say to another human. They wear me out, and then I deflate and stop being fun. But even then they still want more, because they can only remember that deliriously magical Lego smashing session from five hours ago and not the digital-clicking bore of an adult from two minutes ago. I am doomed to children by my own fondness for children.

Aunt: the person who gets to drop in, wild up someone else’s toddler, and then waltz back into her own easy-breezy life when the fun wears off, retaining soaring levels of popularity with the toddler (and a subsequent ego boost) in exchange for minimal work.

Mom: the ultimate prisoner.

But now, I’m actually on the verge of becoming an aunt for the very first time, and that plus the realization that I’m about to move away from my two sweet almost-nephews has given me the energy to stretch that hour longer than necessary. And yesterday, I remembered why back when I babysat toddlers for eight hours a day, three days a week, I actually thought that playing with kids was fun:

Because playing with kids isn’t fun—but teaching them is.

When I’m only trying to play with littles, then I’m mindlessly matching their every whim. You want another round of making car sound effects while we zoom down the couch? Okay. Car sound effects, take 116. I want to smash my head into the TV screen, but that would be a bad example for my watching little, so I don’t. But when I’m actually scheming new ways to infect my unsuspecting little with knowledge, independence, growth, maturity, and practice, I’m back in the driver’s seat. I’m creatively scheming new ways to sneak competence, goodness, life, and blessing into a three-year-old whose entire attention is currently consumed by Hotwheels. This is a game, because the rules are a little different every time, and I’ve got to feel my own way forward: how can I combine fun play, meaningful relational connection, and new knowledge or skills all into one Pied Piper moment?

Vocab is an easy go-to and always important, and itty-bitties absorb it all up without so much as a question half the time. Just try it: pick a new word and start working it into your play as often as possible during a few sessions in a row. Act it out when you can. Say it back to back with its definition: “I’m at the peak of the mountain! I’m at the very top of the mountain!” or “This hula hoop is fragile. It breaks easily.” Toddlers are wickedly smart learners, because they just take it all in, and then all of a sudden they’re parroting that exact phrase back to you—correctly—without you ever asking them to say it. Absolutely incredible.

But I also love telling them what I know about life, because this false idea that toddlers only care about their own toys and kid shows is silly. They actually get a blast out of learning. “Teach me, Sarah!” “Okay. What should I teach you?” “Teach me about French fries.” So first we talk about how it comes from potatoes, and that brings us to the fact that the carrot on his plate was originally underground, and then we’re onto the digestive system. I make a rhythmic chant out of it and trace the journey of every item on his plate: first you chew the rice up NOM NOM NOM, then you swallow it GULP, and then it falls dooooowwwwwn your throat and it falls dooooowwwwwn your esophagus, and where does it land?! “IN THE WATER IN MY BELLY!” That’s right; it lands in your stomach SPLISH! And then the stomach acid GURRRRRRR breaks it down into teeeeny-tiny pieces, and those go all the way through your body and make you STRONG! We do it again and again, and boom, he’s got it. Eventually, I add on intestines and waste. I mean, come on—why not? He’s three, but he’s perfectly capable of understanding the digestive system, and he’s fascinated by it.

And it isn’t just facts alone that are fun; teaching includes skills and developing a strong internal locus of control. Sometimes, weaving moments of growth into our play is as simple as gently saying no when he asks me to get something for him and reminding him, “You’re a big boy. I think you can get it.” Then when he does, I’m quick to swoop in with the praise and recognition of a job well done. Sometimes, it looks like making my stuffed animal talk about his emotions to practice healthy emotional processing, even if it’s at a simplified (and constantly silly!) level. And sometimes, it’s as small as holding the baby’s arms up to help him practice assisted walking again and again and again. It doesn’t really matter what domain each of them is growing in at the moment—I just get a rush out of seeing them conquer something new, spread their wings a little further, grin as they push their way forward toward becoming good men.

Here’s what’s strange: we’ve co-opted play from its original intent and dumbed it down to a pastime for kids when it was always meant to be about the serious work of turning into adults. Okay, that was admittedly an oversimplification; play also exists to simply be play. But if that’s all it ever is, then half its joy becomes stunted, because it was never meant to end there. Of course most adults don’t enjoy playing with children; we weren’t supposed to! Though the silliness itself can be delightful at times, our role isn’t supposed to stop there—we have the power to invest play with deeper meaning every time we jump in. Kids were made to naturally love playing and, yes, learning—and maybe it’s just me, but I suspect that adults were made to naturally love equipping kids to grow and mature in healthy ways.

You know what’s fun? Watching little people flourish.