An invitation to play. “Let’s build, Mops,” says my little friend and grand daughter. At 3 years old she is intelligent, quirky and inquisitive. We find the Jenga blocks and pour them out onto the floor. I’m still supple enough to get down there with her and we begin our building.
“What shall we build?” say I.
“Let’s play shops. Build a shop.” says she.
I know I could put anything together with those blocks and she would accept it as a shop. I find I’m invested in making it a good shop. Somehow my own self competition rises to the surface and I’m balancing bricks to create windows, counters and doors. The best shop. Her job, to pass the bricks….and when all of them are used, we play shops. She’s the shopkeeper and I the customer. Interestingly, it’s a grocery store and I ask for the various items on my ‘shopping list’. Three baking ingredients cost me £15! Her costing is not without its own irony, as we’re heading in that direction with inflation steadily rising. I say I’m shocked at her prices and might have to shop elsewhere, she’s very obliging and my next purchases, of which there are many - especially ‘borberries’ - total £4. Much better and I hand over the pretend money. The game continues until all the blocks are in my carrier… and the shop is no more. For her, the fabric of the building became the contents. It fascinates me how a child’s mind adapts to make everything and anything what they want it to be in the moment they think it. It’s so elastic. These identical blocks were tins of beans, red sauce, blueberries, potatoes, pasta … and my bag was full. The shop has gone. So we started again and built a hospital with 4 beds and a nursing station. I can see she is soaking it all up. She’s recently paid a visit to the hospital and has some idea of what I’m talking about as our walls are given windows and doors. She, of course, is the doctor and I am the patient. She allocates bed one and I am dosed with great quantities of blueberry medicine to make me better, then packed off to ‘please come back in 5 weeks.’ I’m released and head off to make a cup of tea in the kitchen. She waits patiently for my return and more building.
In this play we’re building something together. Something more than the block configurations on the floor. We’re building relationship. She gives me permission to be in charge of building, passing the blocks to me as I need them, impatient for completion so the real game can begin. I’m her slave and do as I’m told, although I question her decisions sometimes, she always has an answer that makes perfect sense… to her. She’s got it all figured out. Smart as paint. I’m learning too., some of my own elasticity is being stretched.
I don’t get to do this often enough, nobody’s fault, just logistics of time and distance, theirs and mine. It’s true for all of our grandchildren, they’re spread around the country and number 6 is due in February located in Harrogate. This is modern life in a nutshell and now I can see how beneficial it was for families to stay local and not move further than a few streets away in times past. We have all become migrants and first fledge the nest for university and then for work. Having your children and grandchildren ‘round the corner’ means they know you and you them. You are an everyday part of the fabric of their lives and contribute to their life education, stability and general well being. Likewise they contribute to yours. There is an inter weaving of experience. There is value and purpose in your existence within the family group. At the same time their parents have a trustworthy and reliable source of help. This idea maybe paints a rose-coloured picture and the reality is never as clean cut or story bookish, simply because people are complicated. Of course grandparents are still very much helping their children today, so many young families need both parents to work full time just to make ends meet and so granny and grandpa pick up from school, give supper and see to homework. I notice lots of silver surfers pushing prams on the High St. It does have a different feel to it though. There’s a driven necessity behind it and no choices….
As an ever evolving population we’re finding new ways to live our lives. Adapting to change, fast moving pace, shrinking world and cultural reordering. Making time with the little ones really counts and always involves play of some kind. Play is the best way for a child to meet with you. I’ve hidden in tight cupboards, behind curtains and under furniture for hide and seek. Worn silly tutus, hats and plastic jewellery for dressing up. Collected leaves, sticks, stones, shells and berries on nature hunts - my favourite game. Glued glitter, cut paper, painted and crayoned as though my life depended on it. Chased and run, sat quiet and read, watched films, sang songs, kicked balls, roared like a dinosaur and generally engaged in whatever activity is pronounced ‘our game’ on my visits. In one sense, the distance and irregularity of visits means we have to get to know each other all over again each time, but it also means we are fun Mops and Pops. We’re not involved in the day to day, our visits are special simply because we don’t get to do it all the time. We’re the warm milk and biscuits. It’s pointless yearning for the old ways - it wasn’t even that way when we were bringing up our children. We moved around, my mother stayed put and didn’t drive although she thought nothing of hopping on a bus to come for a visit and she always wanted to and she always helped. Sadly only two of our children got to know her. However, they all know Granny Mary’s soup, a favourite of the entire family. Heart warming, nourishing, her beautiful legacy and the recipe passed on for new generations to enjoy. She lives on at our table.
For a short while I worked for a child psychiatrist where play played the biggest part in a child’s help. It was an all female department. Psychiatrist, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and me, the admin. There was funding for it within the NHS in the early eighties, pretty good to have a small but dedicated department to child mental health. Our psychiatrist undertook all of her sessions with patients in the playroom. Her office was only used for parent conversations and making notes. I learned a great deal and found working in an entirely female team, refreshing and very supportive. We were equal, even though they were the qualified professionals and I, the support. The playroom revealed the roots of a problem and children never felt analysed or ‘treated’. They played and she helped them. I typed up all the session notes and recognised the significance of this approach to child welfare. Current research has shown the huge benefit of play in helping our children to learn and that we’re possibly misguided in sitting little ones at desks for education. The sand box and dressing up corner offer more… Perhaps we’re making moves in the right direction? People like Gabor Maté stride us forward in our approach to the little people and how we help them to ‘become’, avoiding trauma and developing authentic and conscious adults.
So much of scripture refers to the relevance of children and a child state of mind. And this at a time when children were viewed in the same way as women, as less. Unimportant, owned and without recognition. There’s no mistake in the teaching:
Matthew 18:2-5 ‘He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’
And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
‘At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.’
Teaching as relevant today as it was when first spoken. A revelation of seeing what children bring to us in their innocence and smallness and what we gain from holding on to the child in ourselves.
Play is good for all of us, whatever our age, we need to find moments where we regularly indulge in it. Opening our imaginations wide to possibility, looking for the mystical and magical, feeling awe and wonder and what better time to do it than now as we approach Christmas. Return to the part of you that is transfixed by the Christmas tree lights. Keep a teddy close by. Walk in the woods and believe in fairies. Be little again and run without holding back. Anything is possible to a child mind, don’t block it, build it, make it your own and play it out. Till the next time.
A x
A little bonus here - it’s Christmas after all and never too early for a present. A poem we have framed on our wall to remind us of ourselves.