We're on day four of daycare being closed due to the ice on the roads in Dallas. I've shuffled meetings as best as I can. I've whipped out the emergency stash of paint and ceramic dinosaurs I picked up at Target so I can join one of the few meetings I couldn't move.

"Take all the time you need," my boss tells me over Slack.

But I can tell, much like my car in the driveway, I'm on thin ice.

There are only so many ways to fill the hours. Do you think a good signal for excessive screen time is when the streaming app asks “Are you still watching?” Asking for a friend.

Anyway, as arts and crafts congeal to my kitchen table and George Carlin’s voice may or may not continue to come through my TV speakers I sit down for a conversation with Stacey Goodman who has kindly agreed to chat with me after we discuss some logistics for my son’s upcoming birthday party.

Goodman, better known as Miss Stacey, runs Play Play Play!, a Dallas-based play studio for babies, toddlers, and young children. If you’ve been to one of her classes or parties, you know the setup. Kids move freely. Nothing is rushed. I actually first came across Play Play Play! at a dear friend’s daughter’s birthday party while pregnant with our first. We were uninitiated at the time but Scott and I marveled at what we would later learn was “independent play” and the range of activities set up for these little ones to experience.
Behind her on our video call is a wall full of framed prints. She tells me she bought them instead of expensive art because she wanted something to look at. It’s a small detail, but it tracks.

Before Play Play Play!, Goodman lived in Asia for several years after getting an MBA in international business. She worked in consulting. What stuck with her wasn’t how different life felt, but how similar it was. Kids argued with siblings. Parents worried. People wore jeans. Everyday life looked like everyday life.

While she was living abroad, she started imagining a future child asking questions. Not why questions. What questions. What is this? What is that? She started paying closer attention to how children make sense of the world.

Eventually, she wrote a children’s book about Cambodia. Not about temples or landmarks, but about daily life. How families live. How people get around. What it feels like to be there.

When she moved back to Dallas, she started babysitting. “I missed kids,” she says. She didn’t have a background in early childhood education and wasn’t trying to start a business. She just liked being with children and playing with them.

She noticed something else too. Online, play looked beautiful. Perfect setups. Color-coordinated bins. What no one explained was what to do once everything was laid out.

How to actually play without taking over.

So she started inviting kids to her house.

At first, only one came. Then more followed. Babies, toddlers, parents who stayed instead of dropping off and bouncing. The children moved freely through the room, crawling, climbing, circling back to whatever held their attention. There were no instructions to clean up. No pressure to move on to the next thing.

Goodman narrates what she sees as kids play. Not teaching, exactly. More like thinking out loud. You’re jumping. You’re holding on. What happens if we count while you’re jumping?

All while very often being observed by parents.

Over time, parents started telling her they were learning something just by watching. This surprised her. Without kids of her own, she assumed most of this was intuitive. She didn’t yet understand how much pressure parents feel to constantly engage, entertain, and do it “right,” especially when routines fall apart.

That part lands for me.

When daycare closes all the advice about limiting screens and enriching play starts to feel hollow. The issue isn’t knowing what’s ideal. It’s having something workable.
Play Play Play! creates a place where kids can move, explore, and focus, and where parents don’t have to manage every second.

Her classes are intentionally flexible. Come once. Come weekly. Skip if you’re sick. Skip if you’re tired. Kids range from infants to older elementary schoolers, because she doesn’t believe play belongs to a narrow age window.

Her parties have grown by word of mouth. Parents show up ready to enjoy the experience rather than orchestrate it. Kids get messy. Older siblings wander in. “People tell me they’ve never seen anything like it,” Goodman says. “And I think, this is just play.”
She calls it meditative, not because it’s quiet, but because it’s absorbing. Digging, pouring, repeating the same motion. Focusing on something simple with your hands.
Though I am exhausted, this resonates. I tell her that I feel different after playing with my kids. Calmer. Less scattered. She nods. This is familiar to her.

We talk about the idea that ten fully present minutes can matter more than hours of half-attention. About how narrating what kids are doing helps them learn how to think, not what to think.

When I ask what she hopes people take away from Play Play Play!, she doesn’t talk about growth or expansion. She talks about connection. Parents who met in her classes and now text each other. Kids who started as strangers and ended up in the same schools.

Today, daycare is again closed. The screens will still be tempting. The hours will still need filling.

But the idea that play can be simple, physical, and shared feels like a relief.

For more information on Stacey’s classes or parties check our her website or Instagram. If you need some entertainment to get you through your fourth snow day, here is her YouTube channel.

After this week, there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that I’m cooking so I will shoutout Prince Street Pizza which recently opened their new Dallas location. Fantastic sauce. Highly recommend.

Shabbat shalom,

Viv