Cute – but as ruthless as adults
Power struggles. Love triangles. Hopeless fibs. A fascinating TV experiment reveals the surprising hidden lives of five-year-olds
‘Pick out a girl you fancy — just not that Emily!’ ‘My dear old fish, go boil your head,’ says the little boy
AS TELEVISION romantic dramas go, this one is certainly a nail-biter. Here’s Alfie and Emily, their instant chemistry apparent for all to see, blissfully unaware that their blossoming relationship is under threat. The culprit? Lily, a minxy blonde who is determined to steal Alfie away. Lily’s strategy isn’t exactly subtle, either. ‘What do you want to do with that Emily?’ she demands of the object of her desire. ‘Just bin her!’ Not that Alfie puts up much of a fight. ‘Er, OK,’ he replies. Then again the characters in this particular love triangle are only five. And, as Alfie’s dad Kevin Cook points out, his son ‘didn’t have a clue’ what was going on. ‘He was completely oblivious to it all, wasn’t he?’ he smiles.
Unlike the viewers, who can witness this priceless infant courtship for themselves in Thursday’s episode of The Secret Life Of 4, 5 And 6 Year Olds, the Channel 4 series that aims to show how children act when the grown-ups aren’t present.
More than 2.5 million viewers have tuned in over the past fortnight to see the first two episodes in which four-year-olds go about their business under the watchful eye of hidden cameras. This week and next it’s the turn of those a year older — a year that, according to consultant clinical psychologist Dr Elizabeth Kilbey, makes all the difference in terms of their social skills.
‘When children are four, their predominant focus is still themselves,’ she explains.
‘When you get to five, you have a lot more exposure to groups and you are getting to grips with the idea that it is not just about you, and that there are other perspectives.
‘Coupled with that is a growing awareness of how you fit into the group, so you start to see status issues and leadership come into play. It’s completely fascinating.’ She might add deeply touching and often hilarious.
All human emotions are here in miniature form — one of the reasons that the series makes such compelling viewing, Dr Kilbey believes.
‘What’s so amazing about all of the show is that this is the blueprint for adult life. The reason it resonates so strongly with adults is that we can relate to everything we’re watching. It’s the essence of being human.’
That’s certainly true — there is enough drama here to fuel several soap opera episodes, from that little love triangle to endless jostling for status, via some entirely endearing random acts of kindness and the telling of a few whopping fibs.
What is abundantly clear is that while the 12 children were selected by the producers on the basis that they represented ordinary kids from all over the country, they already have markedly different personalities.
Take bilingual mini-diva Jaja who, when asked what she wants to be when she grows up, replies ‘everything’; and George, a charismatic little chap who nonetheless seems to prefer to play on his own.
Then there’s the sweet-natured but streetwise Lily, who already knows her way around an eyeshadow palette, and Alfie, an enthrallingly clever tiny autodidact whom we see very early on telling a baffled fellow nursery pupil that Japanese bullet trains travel ‘about 272 miles an hour’.
As with the first series of the show, the children were filmed over several days of the summer at a London school with nursery teachers on hand to chivvy along the action.
Their parents, meanwhile, were on site but unable to witness what was going on, meaning the first time any of them got to see what had unfolded was at a recent screening.
‘There was a degree of relief once we’d seen it,’ admits Kevin Cook, a 38-yearold A-level teacher who is father to Alfie and who lives with his homeopath wife, Zoe, 40, and Alfie’s baby sister, Daisy, in Street, Somerset.
‘We didn’t doubt we knew our son well, but you worry about how he is going to come across. At the same time, you always wonder what happens when you’re not there and when we heard about the series, it seemed like an amazing opportunity to find out.’
In fact Alfie is something of a star of the show, what with his amazing factual memory and extensive vocabulary — the latter displayed at its most magnificent when he tells George: ‘My dear old fish, go boil your head.’
‘That’s actually from Charlie And The Chocolate Factory,’ Kevin says. ‘Alfie loves Roald Dahl and has read all of his books. A lot of what he says is inspired by him.’ Kevin and Zoe believe their brainbox son’s perceptiveness and recall may be compensation for the fact that he is profoundly deaf in one ear — something that was only diagnosed last year. Certainly, he is naturally consumed with curiosity about the world.
‘We’re quite self-conscious about not being pushy parents but Alfie just devours everything,’ says Kevin. ‘He reads everything in sight.’
Alfie proved to be a rather unlikely lothario in the series, forming a close bond with one girl, Emily, while also being pursued by the determined Lily, who set her cap at him early on. There’s a wonderful scene when she orders him to ‘pick out of the girls’ whom he ‘fancies’ — anyone, that is but ‘not that Emily’.
‘Lily certainly knew what she wanted,’ smiles Kevin. ‘There was a great moment which I now realise must have unfolded when this love triangle was brewing. She realised I was Alfie’s dad and she came up and started talking to me in a very formal way — asking a thousand questions and trying to glean information.’
It also made for comic viewing for Emily’s London-based mum, Giselle Ewens, 38, an RAF housekeeper, who was thrilled that her ‘funny, kind and quirky’ daughter found such a likeminded playmate. (Early on, viewers see Alfie and Emily playing an invented game called ‘rolling disease’, which involves repeatedly rolling down a hill after being ‘infected’ by picking blades of grass.)
‘Emily and Alfie just clicked straight away — they’ve got a very similar play style,’ she says.
‘Rolling disease was such a classic thing for Emily to come up with, so it was nice to see that there were other quirky kids around, that someone really got her. Then, watching Lily in action was just very funny. She was just leagues ahead in the streetwise sector. A lot of what she said was just going straight over Alfie and Emily’s heads.’
Giselle was already a fan of the show after watching the first series last year, so when Emily came home from school with a flyer in her book bag asking parents to apply she didn’t hesitate. ‘I remember watching it and thinking: “Wow, wouldn’t it be brilliant to see your child in that scenario?” It felt like too good an opportunity to miss.’
Her prevailing feeling watching the show, she says, was one of relief. ‘I knew Emily had really enjoyed herself, as she told me every day — and of course if she wasn’t I would have stopped her taking part. But even so, you’re always thinking: “I hope she comes across as she is.” I was relieved that she was herself and they portrayed her as she was.’
Emily, in fact, is responsible for one of the more tear-jerking moments in the forthcoming episode, when she is given
‘A bird flew down and ate the cake,’ lies Alfie
five stars for being kind to one of the other children and describes it as ‘the best day of my life’.
‘That’s Emily all over,’ says her mum, proudly.
Some moments, meanwhile, are just laugh-out-loud funny. Like the occasion when George is asked what he would change if he could change anything. ‘I’m only five — I don’t know,’ he replies, his disdain for the question clear.
Later he can be seen pretending to be the President of the United States, play-acting a phone call in which he is told he must deal with a fire. ‘I’ll be there straightaway after I’ve made me a cake,’ he declares.
Like Alfie, George is a charismatic little boy — the difference being that he often struggled to integrate with the group.
On more than one occasion, George can be seen forlornly sitting on the sidelines, and when gently asked by one of the teachers why he doesn’t want to take part in any team games, he replies: ‘I don’t know, I just like being alone.’
‘Seeing that came as a bit of a surprise,’ admits his mum Leanne Wakeman, 34, who lives with George’s electrician dad, Kevin, 36, and eight-year-old brother, Jack, in Hornchurch, Essex.
‘I would normally say he’s outgoing and that he’s a team player — he actually plays in a football team.
‘But he’s also quite strong-willed and if he decides he doesn’t want to do something, then he won’t. He likes to evaluate from a distance rather than steam in there, so it highlighted that part of his personality to me.’
George gets downright upset on a couple of occasions, which can’t have been easy to watch. ‘It’s never nice to see your own child cry,’ Leanne says. ‘It tugs at your heartstrings in the most basic way. At the same time, I felt the programme-makers were careful to show the highs and the lows. And that’s life, isn’t it?
‘It’s the same when you’re an adult. I think it was quite testing at times for George, but at the end of every day he always said he wanted to go back. Overall, he definitely enjoyed it.’
George is part of a particularly funny scene when the children are presented with a birthday cake and told not to touch it. The girls are good as gold, but the boys find it too much to resist and tuck in — although they try to do it surreptitiously at first, initially licking it rather than taking out chunks.
When it becomes quite evident that it has been touched, however, they try to cover their tracks, telling the teacher that ‘someone mysterious’ did it — a fib that Alfie in particular embraces with gusto.
‘A bird and mini bees flew down and did that,’ he declares.
Jaja, meanwhile, ups the ante and invents herself an entirely fictional brother called Keelan to give herself status among her new female playmates, while two of the girls show themselves incapable of keeping a secret despite promising they haven’t told anyone.
While we grown-ups might inwardly tut, Dr Kilbey points out that this is an important development stage.
‘I actually don’t like to use the term “lying’’,’ she says. ‘At this stage it is storytelling, which is actually an incredibly sophisticated skill. In order to lie, you have to acknowledge that there is one version of reality and you are creating another. When you’re four, that process is too hard, but five-year-olds start to appreciate that.
‘It’s almost like a magic power — the realisation that you can bend reality — so why wouldn’t you practise that skill? In time, of course, they will realise there are limitations to this skill and that it can cause upset.’
In the meantime, it does at least provide endless scope for amusement, not least for the children’s parents.
‘When I picked George up on the day he’d had the chocolate cake, I asked if they had had any treats and he told me that while there had been a cake for a little girl’s birthday, he didn’t eat any,’ recalls Leanne.
‘I knew it was a fib. He can be a one for tall tales.’
As, it appears, can they all. But what wonderfully compulsive viewing those tall tales make for those watching.
The Secret Life of 4, 5 And 6 Year Olds is on Channel 4 at 8pm on Thursday.