Last night, Daughter 2 (aged 8) told me that she and her friends had plans to play Vampires and Hamsters in the school playground that day. Naturally, I was intrigued. And mystified.
Fortunately, Daughter 2 is the kind of child who's happy to explain the ins and outs of her day-to-day activities at school. I'm aware that some children aren't so forthcoming. In fact, I've got one of them. Daughter 1 can veer between providing me with TMI ("too much information," Mum. "Didn't you know that?") – like what one of the boys in her class does with his bogeys in minute detail – and just grunting and saying that her day was 'alright' but giving me a look that clearly indicates that I'm not to pursue any further lines of enquiry.
Anyway, Daughter 2 was happy to explain what exactly Vampires and Hamsters is. Here are the rules of the game:
Anna* is the Queen of the Vampires. She has vampire helpers as well. Their aim is to catch the Hamsters, whose aim is to run away. (Pretty familiar formula so far.) Now, Vampires eat Hamsters, so they had ovens that they put the captured Hamsters in. And the Vampire jailer locked the Hamsters into the oven, with keys ingeniously made out of a hair-tie and some golden Kirby grips dangling off it. (I don't think that part will be so familiar with you, unless you've been spying over the bush at the Primary School, in which case you're asking for a restraining order.) Apparently, the smallest child was in the dessert oven... But – and here's the denouement – there are cracks in the ovens so the Hamsters had the chance of escape if they could reach the key that the jailer drops. And, of course, being nice girls, the jailer probably left the key near the Hamsters' reach and helped them out.
J. K. Rowling, you've got NOTHING on that.
You see, much though many adults love to pontificate – often pompously and to those who are most likely to agree with them – about how young children do nothing but watch TV and stick their faces into their DSs or iPads and how these "electronic devices" are threatening the particular cells in the brain that prompt their imagination and the will to read, this couldn't be further from the truth. I have spent a lot of time with children of school age for quite a while now, and there hasn't been a single day when I haven't heard a child say something imaginary, fun, inventive or creative.
My girls still play imaginary games together and they have become more elaborate with age. There have been many studies to support the fact that imaginary play is a form of therapy for children, and I remember clearly, about 3 months after Daughter 1 was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes back in December 2012, listening to the two of them sitting in her bedroom and playing at Doctors and Nurses, hearing them pretend to check each others' blood and inject their insulin. And rather than being worried about this, I acknowledged that this was a sign of acceptance and a way of coping.
(Who am I kidding, it was probably just exciting at the time because of the lure of some pretty cool medical kit and some new important-sounding names to learn: "Ketones, pancreas, bolus, wow! Pass me that pricky thing!")
We adults have our own form of imaginary play, we just don't realise it. Fantasy Football league, anyone? There was dress-up Friday for a while in our office, and that involved a fair bit of creativity. We are quite willing to do daft things for charity, which is a masked excuse for behaving like a 1 year-old - sitting in a tub of baked beans is pretty much what a toddler does in their highchair most teatimes. It's just that on the days in which we don't do bonkers things for charity or have fancy-dress parties, which is probably about 360 days in the year (unless you're Jordan), we are expected to behaved like sane adults and have forgotten to remember the days when we put a bucket on our head and waved a stick around pretending to be a knight.
So I'm proud of my daughters' fervent imaginations and encourage the times when they disappear into their bedrooms and talk animatedly about whatever fantasy they have invented. May they grow up to enjoy many a fancy-dress party, and not be backward in getting into the bean bath (but NOT shave their heads for charity, thankyouverymuch). And I really hope I'm there to join in.
*She's not really called Anna.
