The Tattoo Shop

When I pick up my boys from school I am not one of those parents who stands around in groups talking to other parents. No, I like to lurk inconspicuously of course around spaces that are loved by children. I cannot walk into a space without looking around for residue of play. Markings, buildings, collections, things that children have gathered, set up and used. If we look close enough the environment gives up it’s secret.

My lurking isn’t about interrupting or asking questions, it’s about standing around looking busy doing something else, anything else other than looking. Yet I am listening intently while looking at my phone or staring into the distance. My ears are pricked up alert for snippets of information and divulging of secrets.

Rocks piled up indicate they are being gathered and used.

This story starts with me coming across a gathering of small rocks which had been placed together on a larger rock. There were markings on the rock indicating that the smaller ones had been rubbed against the surface which had left marks. Accompanying this were particles of rock. There are two things that immediately excite me about this.

The first thing is this is obviously somewhere children have been and engaged with. Secondly, this mark making is an ancient form of communication. Is it too big a step to suggest that this non verbal communication is a way that children indicate to each other that something is happening. The rocks have provided an environmental play cue to the children which they have returned…but these markings possibly provide a cue to other children. It’s like a secret language that adults aren’t privy too.

As I was having a squizz, children arrived. Four to five children appeared in the space but separately, not together. Two of them dug out empty chip packets and proceeded to carry water from the bubblers to one of the rocks. Arriving at the rock they poured the water onto a small divet and proceeded to use sticks to mix the rock particles together.

 

Particles of rocks mixed with water, stirred with sticks.

Two other children were further up crushing rocks and another collecting and transporting rocks. There were three separate play frames occurring that transformed and changed as time passed. It was a delight to listen and ‘watch’ this small snippet into a world I have long left behind.

And then I heard…”who want’s a tattoo?” 

Flynn: “my mum has tattoos…she would want one”

So over they came to me and asked if I wanted one. “Sure would”. Three children kind of circled in and quietly ushered me over to one of the rocks. “We are giving people tattoos, what would you like?” I was obviously taking way too long to think about my answer because before I could get it out Flynn was standing in front of me with a stick. This stick contained the contents of the crushed mixture. One of the children explained this how I got my tattoo and then it would dry on my skin.

” When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero”.  Fred Rogers 1928–2003

As I was being tattooed it was explained to me that the rocks had to be found and then crushed. I was shown, with reverence, two types of crushed rock, a larger pile with a smaller pile next to it: “this is precious this one, it’s hard to find”. I wonder where they are collecting these rocks from as the school yard is big. I love that the time was taken to source different types of rocks: even the ‘precious’ ones.

 

Here is my tattoo being applied.

Once the tattoo had been finished and whilst still wet, one of the children came over with the dust. This was sprinkled on and then blown away gently by another child who had proclaimed that she was “really good at blowing the dust away”.

Even though I had been invited and some of them had shared the secrets of the Tattoo Shop  I didn’t ask much whilst I was in the children’s space . I am always mindful of adulterating play. I ended up having more than one tattoo that day and some of the children showed me the ones they had either done themselves or by someone else. It got to the point where I could feel my presence in their space so I quietly, without saying anything, stepped to the edge of the play frame.

The edge is where adults need to exist.

 

 

 

Primal Play

 

Children have always played: it’s innate they have to do it. They can receive cues from objects, the environment and play mates. These cues spark off what is called in Playwork terms the play cycle.

Arlo, Flynn and I were on the beach one day and the boys were exploring: climbing up the dunes, playing in the waves a game which they have been playing for a couple years. I find it extremely interesting that this game only happens when we are on this particular beach. This part of the beach has the conditions that are right for this game: the environmental cues that invites them to come and play.

Arlo collected a rock, small about the size of an apple. He ran back to where I was and started making marks in the sand. The colour of the rock left its red mark on the environment.

Flynn saw this and came over asking for a turn. Once he had secured the rock he started running it up and down along a piece of driftwood. The marks were a deep red and had a paint like quality to them.

Understandably Arlo eventually wanted the rock back so Flynn had to go in search of another. After sometime he returned with a smaller rock; about the size of a 50 cent piece. Flynn tested it in the sand and then on the driftwood. The marks were brown, scratchy and not as broad as the marks that Arlo’ had left. Flynn persisted for a while chatting away: ‘it’s not the same colour’, ‘I need to find another rock’. Eventually he stopped, looked around stood up and ran to the water where he promptly threw his rock. My adult self-thought he had given up in frustration and the rock had been banished to the water as it was lacking: not the case.

No sooner than the rock hit the water Flynn was in there searching for it: ‘oh, I think I lost it’. His arm was plunging in and out of the water searching until triumphantly, ‘I got it’. Up the beach he ran back to the driftwood throwing himself down and continued with what he had been doing. The marks were slightly richer in colour.

Hmmm this was more than the water sending him a cue. This was something that harked back to another time. Information passed along from generation to generation. Mark making. Flynn had used his environment and the resources within it, he had used a tool (the stone) to communicate ideas and thoughts…to leave his mark- literally! Evolution.

“Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play…. We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play…it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.”

Johan Huizinger

It’s the idea that once this is how people communicated and did so by utilising the things available to them: rocks crushed to make ochre, fire. There is a theory I have building inside of me: it bubbles and brews and pops up. It feels still a little out of my reach, fuzzy, like it’s still on the edges and I am unable to grasp it fully and it is this:

Is this the way that play connects us to everything and extending this to incorporate the idea that play is at the centre of everything?

But hold on because this particular play cycle wasn’t over…

Flynn: ‘I need a bigger rock that makes a different colour’.

Arlo was asked to help and off they set to one end of the beach where a small outcrop of rocks is situated. Making their way along the beach is never in a straight line. There are adventures within the adventure. There was a dog that bounded over and something else that caught their attention that they needed to investigate. New play frames beginning and ending during the flow of the one I am writing about.

After a while they come trudging back towards me, working hard between them as they each had a side of a rather large rock. They drop it on the ground in front of me, look up and smile triumphantly. Looking at their hands they can see both covered in a rich red colour which they rub on their clothes: this leaves a rich red colour. Flynn then stands and balances on the rock, jumps down and looks at his feet and yes you guessed it. Red.

Then as quickly as this play cycle had started it stopped. Annihilated by Arlo and Flynn as they ran to investigate something else.

What happened to this rock?

I was asked to carry it back from the beach to where it currently still resides which is out the front of our caravan. It was heavy as I walked back, yet every time I walk past it, it makes me smile: this residue of play: a play memory.

#playhard

~ Judd

Journey into Play

Malarkey Playwork

 

Play in Unexpected Spaces

I adore spaces that haven’t been designated specifically for play yet if we stop and take a moment play and playfulness can be observed. There are playgrounds, spaces designed for children, where adults take children to ‘play’ yet play happens outside these spaces all the time, it’s just that adults are too busy and occupied with adulting. Being an adult means more often than not we fail to take notice and most importantly forget what it’s like to be a child: hence a struggle to understand why children do what they do.

‘Play is the thing that children do, all the time and everywhere’ (Colin Ward 1979)

Just before Christmas of last year the plaza we frequent, was as you can imagine, packed with busy shoppers searching for last minute bargains.

Enter Arlo, Flynn and I.

Spontaneously (unplanned and unspoken- the best!) Arlo started walking along the design of black tiles on the floor. Arms out by his side he carefully balanced his way along oblivious to what was happening around him.

“The playing child exists in a world of their own making: This world is made up of the child’s feelings and fantasies, in constant interplay with the physical world of elements and others” (Perry Else)

Arlo turned to Flynn and I and gave us a play cue, “you’re not allowed to step outside the black…………come on”.

I stepped on the black tiles and followed with Flynn close behind. There was no need to respond verbally to this play cue for that would have interrupted the flow: not all communication necessarily needs to be verbal. Unfortunately, adults interrupt play constantly with their questions, rules and limits.

So there we were the three of us all in a line, snaking ourselves along to match the pattern on the floor. And then something very exciting happened. As an adult for a moment I forgot time and place and allowed myself to step outside of my responsibilities and grown up concerns and be in the moment.

Was/is this play? Can adults really play like this…like children? And if they attempt to do so what does this do to the play cycle?

There was giggling concentration and encouragement…”follow me”. My foray into the exhilaration of play the feeling I used to get as a child when I was absorbed and nothing else mattered; the goosebumpy tingle that something magical and exciting was happening or on the verge of happening, lasted but briefly. I was jolted back into reality as a small voice entered my head. Damn that adult voice…..I try to squash it down and ignore it as much as I can but it can creep back in.

And this is what the voice was saying…

What about the people around us, perhaps we were in their way?

This thought was loud enough to break my play cycle and as I looked up to take in my surroundings here’s what I noticed. People heading towards us, in our path, were smiling. Some of them stepped aside as Arlo’s pre-determined path was unable to be broken. A few adults joined in by balancing on the black line and some jumped out of our way completely.

What was happening? I reflected on this a great deal and still do as I try and analyse the relationship between play, children, spaces and adults.

Was it that the adults were attempting to join in even though they hadn’t been invited?

Was it adults reminiscing about play from their own childhoods?

Was it the joy of watching children play with abandonment, regardless of how busy it was and what was going on around them?

Was it adults attempting to support play in the space?

And what was the difference between the adults who jumped unspoken out of Arlo’s way and the ones who verbalised their delight and joined in?

A couple of people made attempts at obligatory comments. These washed over my head but I wonder, did they wash over Arlo’s or did he take them in, grab them, process them. Was it these comments that annihilated the play or the fact that his black line was being interrupted by people and objects.

Mostly my thoughts keep coming back to this:

When children are playing I’m sure that adults are barely tolerated. Adults step in to fulfil a role: whether it is of that of teacher, parent or imparter of knowledge. If we are to support children when playing we need to be doing so when we are invited not when we deem appropriate. We must ask ourselves what it is we do to spaces, children and play cycles when we are present. Adult agendas?

~ Judd

Journey into Play

Malarkey Playwork

Exploring Death in Play

“These games will be the death of me yet; the wrack and ruin, or else the salvation……Games pared down to the blazing bones, to the beautiful, terrible core of it all.”

‘Bone Games’ ~ Rob Schultheis (1999)

 

“……this full and complete allowance of a self, including all the ineptness, failure, and possibility of death, because it is understood that only with this allowance do we have the capacity to be great”. Savage Park’ ~Amy Fussleman (2015)

 

One of my children is currently fascinated with death, including but not limited to gravestones, cemeteries and associated thoughts and ideas of zombies, vampires and a host of other ghouls that lurk in the shadows. This obsession may be due to his feelings of loss given the fact that his father and I separated this year, or it could be fuelled by the sense of his own mortality, as he has come to realise that everyone dies, yes even children. One of his favorite sayings is, “Somebody dies every minute“. Regardless of where the interest has sprung from, the need for him to explore the idea and concept of death has been embraced with force and permeates his life and therefore his play.

In the last couple of years my ideas and philosophy around play have changed dramatically. Trained in the early childhood sector, play for a long time, needed to resemble something that children did to learn and that needed to fit neatly into a box. Adults were there to ‘teach’ children how to sit and listen, to pack away and to co-exist with their peers. The ‘unpleasant’ components of play had no place in this type of setting. Reflecting, it seems these points are all linked to one objective- children learning respect and being able only to explore what is acceptable in adult’s eyes.

But what is respect? Respect is an adult ideal and concept, so does it exist in the world of children? If so, what does it look like to them, or in fact does it need a label? Let me take a step back.

One Friday my boys ran in excitedly from the backyard, “look what we found”,
“what is it called?” It was indeed a Christmas beetle, shiny and beautiful and very much alive. My child, the one who is currently exploring death, found the beetle a home which happened to be a baking dish from my kitchen. (For those of you that know me are now having a giggle, if not an outright laugh. For those of you that don’t know me, I think it’s safe to say, the baking dish went to better use as the Christmas beetles home). I was asked to look up what they ate, which by the way wasn’t anything that grew in our garden. Other interesting facts were noted and then the decoration of the ‘home’ began with a thoughtfulness that was touching.

The cling wrap came out for a cover so the beetle couldn’t get away and holes were added for ventilation. Fingers and sticks went into the home to explore the beetle on a different level, a level of being a captive. There was no escape, the beetle was cornered and it had a captive audience that were extremely inquisitive. Did I step in and stop this play? No. In terms of those ideas surrounding respect, are some of you by now, asking if I should of? That day the beetle was shown to friends who also were intrigued, by its colours, it’s habitat and where it was found. This location could be pinpointed to a single leaf in the garden as if the moment the beetle was discovered was precious and one forever etched into memories. The cling wrap came off as it was discovered over time and through observation that the beetle couldn’t get out of his home. And so, the beetle spent the night in there outside. Did I know what was going to happen? Yes. Did I stop it or step in? Still, no.

The next morning it was discovered the beetle had died overnight. Were the boys particularly sad? Not really. Was I an accomplice to his death? That afternoon my death obsessed offspring decided to hold a ceremony for him. The beetle was to be buried in the backyard. We were all asked to make a tombstone and say a few words. “He was good beetle and we will remember him. He was our friend”, “he was beautiful and I will miss him”. My contribution was, “he was shiny”. On the last scooping of dirt to cover “Buggy”, my son said he had to see him “one more time” and so he was dug up again and held and said goodbye to for a final time.

Afterwards we were chatting about the day and “Buggy”. I asked, “why do you think he died?” The answer? “Because we didn’t feed him“. They knew. Do I think that what they did is cruel? No. If not for this experience, the theme, ideas and thoughts surrounding death, they may not have had the opportunity to be explored. The understanding and observation for the Christmas Beetle may have been undiscovered.

How far will this understanding reach? To what end does it go into building a part of who they are? I am not an advocate for animal cruelty, far from it, but without these types of experiences, that adults can judge as disrespectful, where does their understanding and knowledge come from?

~ Judd

Journey into Play

Early Childhood Training and Consultancy