Children need their freedom – and soap
Before the Covid-19 lockdown, Emily Brookes’ children didn’t have a lot of time to stop and smell the soap, but it’s a different story now.
My 3-year-old daughter, Romy, is obsessed with a bar of soap. A simple, ordinary bar of Lux soap that comes in a four-pack for $3.49 at a local supermarket. She loves it because it’s pink, because it smells nice, and because it has little flowers stamped in the corners.
Since she found it in the bottom drawer of her grandparents’ bathroom vanity last week, she has spent many a happy hour gently caressing and sniffing it. It sits next to her while she’s drawing or playing with playdough.
She carries it around in a zip-lock bag and, after winning a heated negotiation with her parents, sleeps with it under her pillow.
We had a little chin-wobble the first night when she realised that, after she’d used it in the bath, the flowers were gone for good.
Luckily, these things come in the aforementioned four-pack, so we replaced it. She now has a bar for washing and a bar for company.
The next day, we had to find another little bar for her baby doll. So now Ruby has her own, stamped with a hotel insignia, that Romy uses to wash Ruby.
It is bringing her so much joy, this bar of soap.
But I don’t think she would have even found it were we not in lockdown.
For Romy and her 5-year-old brother, Sam, ordinary life is a blur of activity.
With two parents who work fulltime and run a business, they go to daycare or school during the day, and by the time they get home they’re exhausted. It’s a pretty quick shuffle through homework, dinner, bath, and bed; rinse, repeat and they’re up the next morning to do the whole thing again.
The weekends come with a flurry of activities, birthday parties and play dates. I’m terrible at letting my kids entertain themselves.
I’m always making them do something: Let’s jump on the tramp! Go for bike ride! A bushwalk! It’s library day! There’s a performance on! Learn something!
I’m the sort of parent who’s always looking for a teachable moment. I have this idea that without explicit guidance, my children will be little lost lambs – roaming hillsides, bleating with boredom, which will lead, inevitably and destructively, to the television.
Like many parents, I was relieved when Nigel Latta said we shouldn’t worry too much about screen time during lockdown.
With my husband and me still working, I had figured the kids would spend every waking second floating in a streaming service, and an actual, bona fide parenting expert had just vindicated me.
However, they really haven’t. Sure, they’ve had more screen time than they usually do, but I’ve learnt that leaving my children to their own devices doesn’t mean, well, leaving them to their devices.
Handed the twin gifts of time and their grandparents’ large, provincial section, Sam and Romy have done something I didn’t have faith in them to do. They’ve figured out their own fun.
Unbidden, they’ve gone hunting for rabbit holes in the garden. They’ve found string beans left too long on the vine and opened them up, filling a jar with the hard little treasures inside.
They’ve created a game called The Witch Game. It’s deep of character, rich of plot, and complex of rule; the main thing I can understand about it is that it involves a lot of riding their bikes in circles around the driveway, shrieking.
And now Romy has this soap. This cheap, ordinary, run-of-the-mill soap, a bar I wouldn’t even consider special enough to give as a gift.
But she doesn’t know that, and she doesn’t want to know it. It’s not up to me to confer significance, or lack thereof, on this treasure of hers.
She found it all by herself and she loves it.
In a few more weeks, lockdown should be over. Back to daycare, back to school, back to routines, schedules and appointments.
Part of me is looking forward to that. But I’m going to remember that my kids need time to slow down and smell the soap.