Back to basics turns world into playground Simple traditional ideas for play touch on something priceless within family life, writes Bel Mooney
ASUNDAY afternoon, and one of those days when afternoon boredom sets in. My daughter Kitty and her family were staying with us while their new kitchen was being installed, and we were also looking after my three-year-old grandson Barnaby while his parents were working.
He had to be entertained with Kitty’s daughter Chloe, who’ll also be three in September. In a moment of inspiration, Kitty cried out: “Let’s make a den – like when I was a child!” In no time, she had pulled four chairs out and set them with the backs facing each other, about a metre apart. I provided two throws, plus a red-checked tablecloth – enough to drape over the chairs to create roof, walls and a door.
In went a small pile of cushions – and the children followed, squealing with delight. We added plastic plates for a pretend meal… and, once again, old-fashioned play exerted its timeless magic.
A den. Somewhere to hide, whisper, giggle and make-believe. A castle or a fort or a playhouse or a witch’s cottage in the woods, or even an underground cave – all from four chairs and some fabric.
It cost nothing and there wasn’t an expensive plastic toy, piece of merchandising or item of technological wizardry in sight. What’s more, as a mother and grandmother, I confess that a large part of my fun came from witnessing Kitty’s own.
A fantastic mom and aunt, she was enacting her own childhood happiness – and that gave me real pleasure. I was so pleased, I put this little story on Facebook – and was amazed by the enthusiastic response from all ages.
Such happy memories were shared – like this, for example: “I just reminisced the other day on here with a friend my own age – 57 – about how a travelling rug flung over a lowered clothes rope in the garden and pegged was our tent.
“Bushes were our hiding places, weeds were what we ‘cooked’ in toy pans, and our teddies and dolls ‘ate’ that. Chalk and a skipping rope were our essentials.”
Somebody else wrote: “Seeing this brought back such happy memories – my grandma used to build dens for/with me – she was about 70 and I was between four and six.
“Once the tablecloths and sheets had been arranged and pegged into place, she would make tiny sandwiches and a pot of orange-squash ‘tea’ and get in there with me. I returned the compliment and did the same for my sons, and now plan to do the same for my granddaughter. Thank you!”
There were memories of dens made with piles of cushions, or “a huge empty cardboard box which had once housed a chest freezer, taken home, the flaps formed into a peaked roof, a door and windows cut out”. In 1992 that woman’s sons “had a ball for weeks with this construction as their gang hut”.
Many more posts in the same vein revealed a powerful sense of tradition: the simple ideas for play that are handed on between the generations. No wonder I felt such deep-seated delight at Kitty’s reminiscences, triggered by her spontaneous idea. She recalled dens in the garden and old-fashioned party games organised by her dad, and letters written to her by her doll and other sweet memories. She also loved a mad game aptly called Frustration, and interminable games of Snakesand Ladders andLudo.
You can’t dismiss such thoughts as mere nostalgia. They touch on something of incalculable value within family life. It’s telling that a new study has found board games (and other sorts of play) are falling out of favour because children are too busy with technology.
No surprise there, but the significant finding is that more than two-fifths of children mourn the lack. They feel they don’t spend enough time playing games with their parents. The researchers found that computer gaming among children aged seven to 14 has doubled within a generation, and three-fifths of the children play these on their own.
But only a quarter of children have learnt to play chess, compared with almost half the parents when they were young. In turn, many parents worry that this is having an adverse effect on their children’s development – in that the kids are not gaining the same skills they themselves had when growing up.
One of which is, surely, making a den. Compare things as different as creating a den from chairs or a box and learning to play draughts, or an old-fashioned game like HappyFamilies.
What they have in common is parental involvement and patience. To sit a child down in front of a screen (TV, tablet or smartphone) takes just seconds. To play requires time.
The point is, no child of three is going to think of making a den or playing a game alone. It takes the parent to say, in effect: “Let’s do this. Let’s turn ordinary things like chairs and a tablecloth into something magical.”
Hands-on parenting involves just such simple ideas – and giving the concentrated, loving attention necessary to put them into practice.
But if a mom or dad (or granny) comes up with the idea, instilling the habit of creative play, then the kids will remember and go on to create their own imaginative games.
The den, you see, is an idea as well as a reality. French philosopher Gaston Bachelard has written eloquently about the essential human need for secret spaces to withdraw to, because they “shelter day-dreaming”.
When I was a child, growing up in a council flat in Liverpool, there was a “dining alcove” at one end of the living room. The dining table was used only at Christmas (we ate all our meals in the kitchen) and I remember it covered with a chenille-type cloth under which I could hide – and just dream.
Surely the need to make dens in childhood is linked to the well-known adult need for sheds and other hideaways. There’s a phrase in use on social media which goes something like: “If you want me, I’ll be in my home-made fort, colouring in.”
It’s a joke which conceals a truth about human nature. For there we have two childish pastimes rolled into one and used to express an adult need to escape from the information-mad world of technology which dominates our lives.
The craze for adult colouring-in books has taken the world by surprise, but I understand it, just as I know that dens symbolise far more than tablecloths and chairs shoved together.
Such pastimes involve quietness and calm and time to withdraw. They give space to think and exercise the imagination and dream… and then emerge rested. We require that healing respite from the jangling world.
It is essential to their development that small children need to learn how to play within their dens of imagination.
Only we can teach them – and in so doing we can remind ourselves how to be. – Daily Mail