Play and Love Loud
Photo by Jochan van Wylick on Unsplash
A few weeks into the school year, our family has found its way into a new season, with the twins starting high school and experiencing much longer days, while our youngest continues in middle school with practices after dinner. Different drop off and pick up times, new school schedules and routines, but still earlier mornings, scrambling to pack lunches, coordinating after-school carpools, the endless rhythm of practices and homework. But as parents, talking with so many in a similar season, we’re also always navigating something deeper: the push and pull of holding on and letting go.
Maybe that’s why the debates swirling around parenting today always hit so close to home—we’re all trying to discern what actually helps our kids flourish in a world that is noisier, faster, and more digital than ever before. For the last several years, we’ve seen more and more conversations about the increasing rise of phones or social media engagement and mental health in relation to our kids. There’s also the ongoing issues of food insecurity and nutrition, gun violence and safety concerns, economic inequality and instability. I know any of us could go on and on.
When we first moved to Annapolis during the COVID pandemic, our kids were constantly outside, exploring the parks and docks around us and walking downtown. They would be out in the driveway shooting hoops—the thump of the ball echoing off the houses, their trash talk and competition carrying well past the hedges. Some days it was soccer in the backyard, shrieks and shouting as they argued over goals. Or just tag or football with new friends or catch in the front or side yard. But we live in a neighborhood mostly populated by older adults, so sometimes I would worry and wonder if our family was (and is) singlehandedly bringing down the real estate value of the street.
In the midst of all this, I’ve been sitting with two essays—Lenore Skenazy, Zach Rausch, and Jonathan Haidt’s reflection on smartphones and play in The Atlantic and Abigail Shrier’s piece, “Let Kids Be Loud,” in After Babel. They remind me that our children don’t just need structure and supervision; they need and actually want spaces to be noisy, messy, and gloriously free. To play. But it’s a deeper reminder about the ways we participate in shaping not only a particular legacy, but a humanity that is tender, resilient, and capable of joy even in the midst of struggle.
And yet, beneath all the noise and chaos of parenting lies something deeper than nostalgia, pointing us toward what we believe about God, childhood, and the kind of community we’re called to nurture here.
There’s a theological claim percolating in these conversations: our children are created in the image of a God who delights in freedom and joy. Their humanity reflects God’s image in all its diversity, playfulness, and possibility. I love the example from creation, which bears the marks of God’s imagination—the riot colors of a sunset, the odd beauty of a platypus, the “Leviathan to sport in the sea,” (Psalm 104), the endless variety of seashells and snowflakes. All of this is echoed when kids spill out onto the sidewalk in laughter or race down the block on bikes–we catch a glimpse of that divine extravagance. When they experiment, take risks, and yes, sometimes get hurt, we are reminded that grace is woven into growing up, and humanity is not defined by fear or scarcity, but by love, trust, and abundance.
The great irony of modern parenting is that we spend enormous energy creating enrichment opportunities while overlooking the gifts of unstructured time and space—of roaming the neighborhood, of taking risks and even sometimes getting bruises, of discovering the world on their own terms.
In the return to pre-pandemic modern life these last few years, we’ve quickly drifted back into the churn of “normal life”—school drop-offs, full calendars, and crowded sidelines. What once felt fleeting and precious during lockdown—slow mornings, being outside whatever the weather, family walks, dinners without hurry—has been eclipsed by the pressure to keep pace. It’s remarkable how quickly modern expectations rush back in, as if nothing changed. We find ourselves swept up again, pulled between the longing for simplicity and the demands of productivity, and smartphones as the begrudging solution to it all.
And yet, beneath all the noise and chaos of parenting lies something deeper than nostalgia, pointing us toward what we believe about God, childhood, and the kind of community we’re called to nurture here.
The church has a vital role. Our communities can be places where children are not hushed but heard, and perhaps they might even lead us in their questions and giggles, as their presence reverberates through sanctuaries and fellowship halls. In a world of increasing isolation—screens in every hand, safety fears at every turn—we can offer something countercultural: room to explore, to create, to wonder, to be boisterous and a little rowdy. For all of us.
In our own sanctuary, a small table sits right up front—we call it the family table, and it is covered with butcher paper, crayons scattered in baskets, oversized posters waiting for doodles, and even fuzzy pipe cleaners ready to be twisted into whatever shape a child’s imagination dreams up. It’s a small but deliberate invitation: play belongs here in the heart of worship. The family table reminds us that the church doesn’t just tolerate the noise and wiggles of children, it models what life together looks like—creative, spontaneous, welcome. When children color while hymns are sung or bend pipe cleaners into goofy glasses and bracelets during the sermon, they show us that faith, like play, is not something rigid but something alive. And when we hear their voices, even if it feels loud, we can remember not only the gift and blessing of their lives in our midst, but simply who we are in our own humanity.
