Another Bad Guy Trap And A Spider's House

A couple months ago, I wrote about our "bad guy trap," a work of playground folk art created mostly by a couple friends that grew from the debris (what others might call "loose parts") amongst the lilacs at the top of the concrete slide. That's mostly gone now, although there are still a few buckets dangling from branches up there.

The good news, or bad new depending on your perspective, is that it appears to have just outgrown it's former location, moving to a slightly more spacious area between the cast iron water pump and the swing set. I hadn't noticed it happening at first, this migration, although it began several weeks ago when some entirely different children managed to get one heavy shipping pallet stacked atop another. They had then arranged four tires in the appropriate positions, installed seats made from milk crates, used an old baby gate as a front grill, to create a car complete with a steering wheel.

The car had been a hit for a day or two, with lots of kids of all ages taking their turns sitting there, pretending to drive various places, but had been more or less abandoned since then. Our bad guy trap builders had, slowly at first, claimed it's rusty carcass for their own, one loose part at a time, until one day in sort of final flurry it emerged as a full-fledged trap. It's now been an established part of the playground for a couple weeks, although it's still an ongoing project with the two builders forever tweaking it. 

Like before, the trap's creators have been relatively generous, not objecting to other children playing on and around the it, although they sometimes issue urgent warnings about the dangers of their device, which has served to cause most of the kids to treat it with a kind of respect. Occasionally, we've pulled items from their structure for other uses -- for instance, some of the kids wanted to saw branches off the old Christmas tree that had at one point been incorporated -- and the guys have only mildly objected before using it as an opportunity to make further improvements.

We seem to have a child or two, usually boys, with this sort of building instinct every year. It can be both annoying and challenging as they lay hands on everything that's not nailed down for their projects, heaping more and more onto their pile. In prior years, these kinds of builds have filled the sandpit boat on more than one occasion. Last year, they managed to stuff the lower level of the playhouse from floor to ceiling. More often than not these projects can only be left standing for a day or two because the other children start to object to the commandeering of their favorite spaces and objects, but these guys have shown a particular genius for picking relatively out-of-the-way locations so we've been able to let it ride for longer than normal. My rule of thumb for these things is that if it appears to have been abandoned for more than a couple days, we dismantle it by way of sort of "re-setting" the scene and freeing the debris (loose parts) to once more do their thing.

On Monday, a new structure began to emerge, a "spider's house," the brainchild of another boy who had not previously shown a strong interest in constructive play. Indeed, most of his school year has been characterized by social challenges as his long time "best friend" has sought to expand his social horizons, which has hit the kid as a kind of break-up. After weeks of more or less chasing his best friend around the playground, not being rejected, but no longer being treated as the favorite, he seems to have finally found something else to do. His mother told me that constructive play has long been his go-to play-alone activity at home, but other than a few smaller creations, this is the first time it has emerged at school. I like to think that he has been inspired by the bad guy trappers, but whatever the case, he was fully engaged for 45 minutes or so, telling anyone who would listen the story of his spider's house. I'm sort of rooting for our bad guy trap builders to begin collaborating with our spider's house builder, but that's up to them, not me.

At some point, be it days, weeks, or months, these constructions will be gone, scattered about the place only to be recollected into something else. This is the beauty of this sort of play, the kind where children are free move and manipulate their surroundings as their needs and imaginations dictate.

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Unselfish

A few days ago, a young friend of mine who I've known for the entirety of her five years, brought me a gift. It was a picture she had drawn of me along with a message written in her own hand: "Ila (hearts) Teacher Tom." I probably receive a couple of these a week, pictures or other handmade gifts from the children I teach. They are often grubby, wrinkled, and torn from the effort of creation, and as I talk with them, I always learn that every little mark or doodle has a story behind it.

Some time ago I found myself in a friendly debate with a professional who I hold in high esteem. He argued that young children are essentially selfish. Not that he was judging them, but rather, he believed, the ability to view the world unselfishly was a developmental stage that most preschoolers had not reached.

I've not found that to be true. Certainly, young children can be selfish, just like all of us, and some of them tend to be more selfish than others, but every day, all around me, I see young children disproving my esteemed colleague's theory. What I do see are children objecting to being told what to do. I see them sulking when commanded into sharing. I see them reacting angrily, sometimes even violently, to having something snatched from their hands, but, almost without fail, when a child asks for a portion or a turn, they receive it, usually gladly. Every day, I bring conflicts to an end, or even nip them in the bud, by simply pointing out, for instance, "Eleanor doesn't have any play dough," a piece of information that a young child might not have discerned on her own, but that once clearly stated will respond to by generously breaking off a piece of her own play dough for the child who has none. Even in the lead up to the December holidays, I've discovered that children are at least as excited about the gifts they are giving as those they are about to receive.

If "selfishness" is acting without consideration of others for one's own personal profit or benefit, then "unselfishness" is sitting down with a piece of paper and a marker and spending time creating a gift. I would have to be incredibly selfish myself to not see the generosity in Ila's picture. She labored over those letters, shaping them carefully, for me, considering my feelings as she did. She reflected on my physical appearance, drawing a portrait, for me, that included the blue jeans I wear every day, my glasses, a shirt she has seem me wear many times. As she presented the picture to me, I learned that she had wanted to get the color of my eyes right and was disappointed that she had guessed green instead of blue. This picture was not for her own personal profit or benefit, but for mine, one created expressly and thoughtfully for me. If that is not an example of unselfishness then I don't know what is.

Ila gave me the picture on the playground, so after we had discussed it, I folded it up to fit into my jacket pocket. She had put so much unselfish thought into this gift and it made me feel exactly as she had hoped, I expect: loved and treasured. Several times over the past few days, I've felt the paper in my pocket, wondered what it was, then opened it to find that it made me feel loved and treasured all over again.

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Our Boxes

Last week, a reader asked about the large wooden "boxes" that they noticed in one of the photographs.

I don't know whose brilliant idea these were, but they are one of the most useful and simply elegant pieces of equipment we have. Five of them came with the school when I was hired nearly two decades ago and a parent made us three more at my behest.

They are constructed from plywood and are approximately 18"X24"X36". We call them boxes even though they have two open ends. Handles have been cut into the sides, making them convenient to move around.

As you can see from the pictures, they are perfect for both kids and adults when a little extra elevation is needed. They also make nice, child-height impromptu tables that can be made be made as big as necessary just by adding more boxes. They are useful for temporary storage when tipped on end with one of the openings on top. And, of course, they can be called to service as seating when we run out of chairs.

Naturally, the children find plenty of uses for the hollow interior, employing them as "homes," "forts," "caves," "garages," "bedrooms," or "tunnels." Sometimes we stack them two high to have an upstairs and downstairs. Many children over the years have found that they make convenient "escapes" when they need a moment of quiet isolation.

I use them frequently during circle time as a platform for displaying something I want all the kids to see or for conducting science experiments, magic tricks, or for simply beating out a drum pattern. I'll call out, "I need one of the wooden boxes" and sometimes as many as a dozen kids will leap into action, working together to carry the heavy box to where I need it. Likewise, even kids who generally avoid participating in clean-up time will eagerly tackle the challenge of moving them back to their usual spots.

Sometimes the younger children will just spend a half hour moving the boxes from place to place with no objective in mind other than to move them from place to place.

Their uses are endless. Frankly, I can't imagine living without them.

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Protection Play

I typically sit on the sign-in table near the front gate as the children in our afternoon class convene on the playground. This gives me a chance to greet each kid. Many give me a quick "hi" before running off to join their friends, but there are always some who need to start their day by bending my ear over something that has happened since the last time we saw one another, like a hair cut or grandma's impending visit or a movie that impressed them. Some don't have anything particular to say, but just seem to like some time with me by way of transition.

I try to not have any agenda throughout the entire day beyond the barest one of keeping the children relatively unharmed and playing, but during this particular time of our day together, after I've already done my work of getting ready, I am especially agenda-free so it's a great time for just hanging out shooting the breeze with whatever kids choose to linger.

Earlier this week, one boy, a boy who normally does not stop to chat with me, who is usually running full speed with a stick in his hand, pretending with his friends to be action characters of some sort, declared that he was going to "protect" me.

I said, "That might be nice."

He wrangled a step stool into place and parked himself directly in front of me, stick-sword at the ready.

"I like being protected," I told him, "It makes me feel safe." He was doing a pretty good job too, although, in all honesty, no one had yet tested his protective abilities. I was actually kind of curious what would happen if another kid did approach me because although this boy likes playing action games, he is not prone to actual violence.

He smiled at me quickly, but seemed to feel that his job was to sit still, surveying the grounds. Indeed, I don't think I'd ever seen him sit still for this long and I've been his teacher for three years. Soon, with few intruders to fend off, he grew restless. "I'm going to get some . . ." He didn't finish his sentence, but he returned moments later with a pair of chairs that he carefully arranged on either side of his stool. It was unclear whether they were intended as some sort of barrier or as invitations for others, but the arrangement was precise, something I discovered by inadvertently kicking the stool out of alignment, for which I was briefly scolded.

It was at about this time that we were approached by a boy with something to say to me. I cautioned him, pointing at my guard, "He is protecting me." Before he could respond, my protector was on his feet, perfectly balanced like a martial arts master, posed defensively as if to say with his body, Not one step closer, buddy!

Unintimidated, the boy came closer which caused my protector to execute a series of moves that looked like something from a Bruce Lee movie, high kicks and all. The fact that he did this in such close quarters without actually making contact, intentional or otherwise, was impressive. I said, "Thank you for protecting me," before engaging with the boy, still unfazed, who had something to tell me.

I think we're often too quick to label action play as "aggressive" or "violent," when in fact it is actually this, protection play. I'll never forget last year when a girl complained about the "super heroes" telling us that they scared her. The superheroes were genuinely shocked to hear this, "But we're superheroes," one of them said in disbelief, "We save people!" So yes, while there may be some pretend aggression or violence, for most kids, most of the time, this is what it's about: playing at protecting the rest of us from evil. And yes, sometimes there are "bad guys," which are a necessary part of these sorts of games, just as there must be babies when we play at being mommies.

Before long, the chairs on either side of my protector were filled by kids who agreed to join the order. They all sat there together, between me and the world, for quite a long time. Indeed, they were still there, protecting me, even when my adult agenda finally called me away.

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A Wall To "Keep Others Out"

The two of them, a boy and a girl, built a wall. They had the entire checker board rug to themselves, they had all the baby wipe box blocks to themselves, and they decided together to build a wall to, in their words, "keep the others out."

The goal was to build it so high that "no one could get over" and for quite some time no one even tried. They used all the blocks and had all that space.

A classmate finally came to examine the wall.

"It's a wall to keep people out," they said, "You can step over it and come in." When that first friend accidentally kicked part of the wall down in the process, they decided they needed a door.

More friends joined them, using the door in the wall built to keep the others out. Soon there were a half dozen of them inside the wall. Someone said, "This is our new play area."

There were no other toys in the walled play area and the blocks were all incorporated into the wall. All they had was one another, the checker board rug and that wall that was not really keeping anyone out.

They decided to make it a place for dancing. I put on some West African marimba music. They danced within the wall in their own spaces and in their own styles.

One boy found a box full of small, plastic rainbow people and brought it inside the wall. He began arranging them along the top of the wall saying, "These people are our audience." Some of the kids helped him arrange the rainbow audience while the others danced.

As is usually the case with four and five year olds, it isn't enough to play together without also touching one another. The dancers danced together until it evolved into a kind of pig pile under which one of them was trapped. She didn't cry, but they saw pain in her face and decided to play more gently.

Amazingly, after a good 45 minutes, the wall with it's precariously balanced rainbow audience was still standing. By now there was at least a dozen kids inside the wall that had been built to keep the others out, the wall in which they had built a door, a wall inside which they had danced and grappled and empathized and compromised.

Then, as is every wall's destiny, they kicked it over with such an eruptive suddenness that it alarmed us all. I had walked away just prior to that moment and returned, worried that they would somehow need big, responsible, adult me in the aftermath of that wall coming down, but I saw only smiles on beet red faces as they made rubble of that wall that could no longer even pretend to keep anyone out.

Moments later a cry went up, "Let's build a tower!" And together they did.

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Anarchists, In The Best Sense Of That Word

In yesterday's post, I wrote about how a group of preschoolers opened my eyes to a "new" kind of fairness, one that in many way one-upped my adult notions of justice. I was expecting everyone to share in the task of tidying up equally while the kids, it turned out, were perfectly satisfied when everyone simply fulfilled a role, whether or not the labor was divided evenly.

Now, in all honesty, children can also take the point of view that something is "unfair" because things don't go their way. We've all heard kids complain, "It's not fair!" when they're told they must, for instance, wait their turn or share their cupcake with a sibling, but I would assert that the unfairness they perceive has more to do with the adults compelling them to wait or share than the actual waiting or sharing. It's our knee-jerk adult idea that selfishness is the default setting that prevents us from seeing that.

When I sit down at our play dough table, there are often a half dozen kids playing with this limited resource. One of them almost invariably has the lion's share. When subsequent children approach, they often say, "I need some play dough." If the adults don't intervene, I've noticed that nine times out of ten, the child with excess will pinch off a handful and hand it over, expecting neither praise nor thanks. They might not do it as quickly as the adult would like, but that's because they are not reacting to a command, but rather considering a request. Adults too often label that pause as selfish reluctance, when in reality it's time spent in the process of thinking: She wants some play dough. I have a lot of play dough. I could give her some of my play dough.

When a child is using the swing and another child says, "I want a turn," if the adults don't intervene with their ideas about fairness, like "setting a timer" or "counting," the child on the swing almost always gives way within a matter of minutes: He wants a turn on the swing. I have been swinging for awhile. I could give him a turn.

I often wonder how we adults got this way, lacking faith in our fellow humans to share, take turns, and generally behave fairly without commands or rules or systems. Indeed, we act as if selfishness is baked into humans, as if our natural condition is "every man for himself," each vying against the other for advantages. But we're wrong. Anthropologists tell us that there is little evidence that our hunter-gatherer ancestors (95 percent of human existence) viewed fairness as something that needed to be imposed and because of that there was no need for any sort of hierarchy to control the behavior of others. Indeed, their social contract with one another seems to have operated more along the lines of what we today would call "anarchy," in the best sense of that word.

It wasn't until we gave up our hunter-gatherer ways in favor of the settled agrarian life that we invented the notion of "ownership" and discovered the need for commands, rules, and systems. Ownership was something that must be protected and others must be made, one way or another, to labor for the benefit of the owner. In the process of inventing property, we also invented selfishness.

Young children are born as hunter-gatherer style anarchists which is why they have no problem with defining justness in ways other than we do as adults. They know in their genes that it's unjust when those with more do not share with those who have less. They know that it is unjust when one person enslaves another be it with chains or wages. They know that it is unjust when one person gets to "use" the labor of another. They know it is unjust when one person gets to tell another person what to do. Of course, they can't put this into words, but I've seen it time and again in how they treat one another when left to think for themselves.

We then teach them to be selfish, because it's only through selfishness that our commands, rules, and systems make any sense at all. Meanwhile, when left to their own devices, children play together as anarchists, in the best sense of that word.

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My Adult Sense Of Justice

When I was a new parent, my mother told me, "All young children want from adults is attention. They don't care if it's positive or negative so you might as well give them the attention you want to give them, because otherwise they'll take it from you and you're not going to like how they do that."

A few years ago, a boy named River was just milling around while most of his classmates were busy putting Duplos into their plastic tubs. On any given day, there are always one or two kids who opt out of the project of tidying up the classroom. With my mom's advice in mind, I tried to ignore him, focusing my attention instead on the children who were engaged. There was a time when I might have made the effort to try to coax or cajole him into participating, but I'd learned through experience that if that's where I put my attention, that's where the rest of the kids would want to be, so instead I tried to ignore him even as his non-involvement offended my adult sense of justice.

Whenever I write about how we handle clean-up time at Woodland Park like I did yesterday, readers write to ask what we do about those who decline to participate. The short answer is nothing. I tend to let them go about their business as long as they aren't impeding those of us who are taking care of the classroom. That's what I did in River's case, asking him to move when he got in someone's way, but otherwise staying relentlessly focused on the children putting those Duplos into the boxes.

"Robert is putting away the Duplos super fast."

"Missy is looking under the cabinets for Duplos."

"Pat and Owen are are working together."

"This is our school and we're taking care of it."

Before long, the first of the plastic tubs was filled. That's when River sprang into action, leaping in from the sidelines to assertively snap a lid on the box, then snatching it away from the others to carrying it to its shelf. Again, my adult sense of justice was roused. That's not fair, I thought, The other kids did all the work and he stole their glory. None of the kids complained, but it irked me. Then, the following day, he did the same thing, so, in the interest of "protecting" the rights of the other kids, the ones who had done all the work, I decided I was going to try to prevent another repeat. So on the following day when I saw him once more avoiding the "hard work," I engaged him quietly off to the side, hoping to give the other kids the opportunity to experience the satisfaction of snapping the lids onto the boxes they had diligently filled.

As I whispered to him, we were interrupted by one of the other kids who insisted upon handing River the lid to the tub. I looked up to see the rest of the kids standing around it waiting for him to do the honors.

You see, instead of being resentful of River, they had come to accept that it was his clear and proper job to snap the lids onto the full boxes. It was my adult sense of justice that caused me to think something was wrong, whereas the kids harbored no ill-feelings. Indeed, they saw him as essential.

So yes, on any given day, there are two or three kids who don't pull their own weight, but it's not been a problem since I've learned to set aside my adult sense of justice and simply ignore them while focusing my attention on those who do. Perhaps the kids will one day develop this adult idea of justice, but I sort of hope not. In many ways, their concept of fairness is much more evolved than ours.

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