My son asked me to play this week. Now I am good at playing games with them. I can read aloud and color, do puzzles and shoot hoops. But play? He was asking me to engage in his imaginary story and become part of that world. And I froze. I am embarrassed to admit that I truly didn’t know how to respond. It was so easy to play along when they were little–have a tea party, drive big trucks, rock the baby doll… But as they have aged and their stories have become more complex, I realized that I had stopped playing with my kids. Is our imagination like a muscle? Can it atrophy?