5 Benefits of Rented Friends

We live in the metropolitan city of New Delhi, both my husband and I are working in corporate; and our 4-year-old manages to spend most of her day playing and learning on her own. We try to make up for the lost time, by taking her to fancy malls and playgrounds on weekends. Just the mention of swings and rides lifts her up, and when she is actually playing on them, the energy is beyond control. We sit by the side, watching her manoeuvre herself through the complicated mazes, guiding the younger ones to safer routes and copying the stunts of her friends. Friends, yes she makes a new friend every time she goes there. In that one hour, from hugging to pushing to laughing to crying, she experiences the joys and sorrows of being with a friend. And we look at her and wonder, isn’t how this city corporate life has become for all us- in the company of rented friends.

Yes, we pay a small rent at these malls for engaging our kids for one hour at their play zone. Our daughter enters alone, but exits holding someone’s hands, whose name also she doesn’t know. She just enjoys being in the company of that new-found friend.

The increasing discomfort around safety & security in cities and decreasing time of ours, leaves her with no option but to enjoy what she gets on weekends. And I don’t see her regretting this at all.

Her parents grew up with a gang of friends, the same set of people with whom they would play, share stories, fight, compete, love etc. And while we crib about how the kid is not getting that environment, we are warming up to the idea of play-and-move-on friends. And there are some benefits of rented friends.

1. Only Play and Nothing Else: The motive is clear for the children in such play-zones, we are here to play and have fun. So there is no time for negative emotions to come in. Yes fights and pushing happens even then, but that’s forgotten by the time they move to the next ride.

2. Diverse Backgrounds: Let’s accept this one. We do have some biases in our minds, some pranksters we wouldn’t want our child to play with, some kid whose nose keeps running, some kid who keeps hugging, we just want to be super protective and ensure we take away our kids from them, if we know them. The thing with the play-area friends is that even we don’t know who is a potential danger and hence once inside, our girl is on her own. Making her own defenses, and managing her own reactions. She would sometimes cry and complain about someone, but then is back to the game soon enough.

3. Immense Learning: I do feel that playing with people whom she doesn’t know, lets her learn much more than the predictable set of behaviors she would have otherwise encountered every day. Just the other day, she figured out that she could also enjoy in the slide by sliding on her tummy! This, she never learnt with her regular neighborhood friends.

4. Breaks The Monotony: It surely breaks the monotony and routine of playing set games with a set of known people with set rules. The play areas keep adding new things for kids to enjoy, so there is new-ness in how things are done. The children constantly innovates amongst themselves on how and what to do. And there is no barter system that works- I did bowling yesterday, and hence let me do bowling today- that doesn’t work here!

5. Enhanced awareness for us parents: While the kids play, we parents pass our time by talking to other parents. Now these are parents of kids of similar age group but different schools, different styles of upbringing. We get so many insights into the school curriculum, various hobby classes nearby, or maybe even other interesting play-areas in the vicinity.

I guess this is the new age city phenomena that most working parents are adopting. It so easily eases out the guilt from us. The guilt of not taking her to green parks, to her friend’s houses, for cycling etc. Honestly, I am not too worried about this modern concept of use and throw friends. Surely, she would make lifelong friends, with whom she would just want to sit and share her deepest emotions, who would be with her through her ups and downs in life. But till then, the rented friends will do.

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