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Unleashing Your Family's Imagination

"I thought I'd always have time to play with my kids," says Kate Krautkramer of Yampa, Colorado, whose two children are 5 and 3. The reality for Krautkramer, however, is the gritty truth for many moms: "I spend so much time working, cleaning, and taking care of other things necessary to our lives that I don't have much time to just have fun with them."

Take heart. Whether you have ten minutes or all of Saturday afternoon, you can easily incorporate fantasies into chores, errands, and daily routines like meals and bathtime. Some ways to let your imagination run wild:

Encourage daydreaming. With many preschools focusing more on academics and kids taking part in organized sports and activities at younger ages than ever, parents need to try to build in some old-fashioned, unstructured free time.

Melinda Misuraca of Healdsburg, California, limits her three daughters' TV and computer time as a way to push them to learn how to amuse themselves. "I try to encourage my kids to be self-sufficient during their free time. They read or come up with games to play with each other, which has helped them become more imaginative," says Misuraca.

Create play spaces. On each floor of Betty Faris's three-story house, there's an area with arts-and-crafts supplies for her son, 9, and daughter, 6. These spots include shelves stocked with construction paper, jars filled with pens and markers, and shoe boxes brimming with beads and clay. "This way, they can help themselves anytime, whether they're in the mood to make up games or just draw pictures," says Faris.

Other simple, inexpensive items to keep on hand:

• Large cardboard boxes. No need to break the bank for a wooden puppet theater, and once your children tire of putting on puppet shows, they can transform that box into a spaceship, a submarine, or a bus.
• Old scarves, to help your kids pretend to be airplanes or ballerinas.
• Tattered maps, to find buried treasure.

Feed your own fantasies. To enjoy make-believe games with your family, you need to summon enough energy to cut loose from reality yourself. Instead of composing to-do lists in your head, let your mind wander when you're waiting to pick up the kids from practice or fantasize while you're falling asleep.

Take a walk down memory lane. As you play with your kids, you may remember made-up games you played as a child. Share them with your children, as Cynthia Anderson, who lives in London, does. When she reads her favorite childhood stories to her two kids, ages 5 and 2, she's reminded of how she once played out those stories with her friends.

Turn work into fantasy play. You might think that playing make-believe with your child will eat up time you don't have, but in my experience, the opposite is true. When I'm cooking dinner, the surest way to keep Aidan from stirring up trouble is to let him pretend to be a kitty: I lay out a sleeping bag for him to curl up in, and he meows and plays with "cat toys" that I hand him from the kitchen drawers while I'm frying or baking or peeling. And when I'm exhausted at the end of the day, I often lie on the couch and act like I'm wounded (not far from the truth). Aidan tends to me by wrapping dish towels around my various bleeding or broken limbs.

However, it's important to recognize when kids are using make-believe to try to bargain with you or manipulate you, says Marjorie Taylor, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. After all, you can't skip the grocery store or a trip to the pediatrician's office just because Nobby the No-Nose Troll hates to ride in the car.

Be part of the show. As fertile as their creativity is, kids need and love inspiration from you. Anderson and her family make up a story together at least once a week over dinner. "We dim the lights and burn candles to set the mood," says Anderson. "Either my husband or I start, and then our two boys each have a chance to add to the tale before it goes back to the other parent to be finished."

As your children get older, with your encouragement they'll be able to move off on their own, creating lively and exciting new worlds for themselves. Meanwhile, enjoy the fun. Just like Aidan, Phoebe Adams's son, Jack, has scared away many monsters and saved drowning animals from shipwrecks -- and she's done her part. "Sitting in a life raft of pillows with a crew of stuffed animals," she says, "has been, without a doubt, one of my most significant accomplishments as a mom."