Why won't I get on my kids' trampoline?

A man bought his son the finest kite in the bazaar. Red silk, long tail, a spool of good string. Every Friday he walked the boy to the field, unwound the string into small hands, and stood back to watch. One day the wind was perfect and the boy was home with a fever. The man stood in the field alone, holding a kite he had never once flown, and did not know what to do with his own hands. You are not stingy with joy. You are generous with it — for them. The trampoline, the paints, the board games: these are real gifts, not excuses. But somewhere along the way you built a rule nobody wrote down: play is a thing you fund, not a thing you do. You became the kite merchant instead of the kite flyer. This is not about needing permission to bounce on a trampoline, though you do have it. It is about noticing that you have made yourself the audience of your own household and called it parenting.