Why imaginative play is bad

You know all those toys the Waldorf folks encourage you to give your child?  The kind that allow open-ended play and require kids to use their imaginations?  You know what I mean-- everything from the sticks and bits you salvage from the garden to the pricey, colorful playsilks and hand-carved whatnots in the catalogs...

Sure, they're all-natural and aesthetically pleasing.  They biodegrate and even smell nice.  Heck, they're probably even tasty, if you're into that sort of thing.  But seriously, have you ever seen what kids do with that stuff?

If you're a Waldorf-influenced parent, I know what you're going to say.  You're going to adamantly insist that they play with it.  You'll tell me how they turn their play stands into shops and houses and bus terminals.  They use their conkers and tree blocks as meatballs and pancakes, dog food and money.  And with fabric and string they transform themselves into silken-winged fairies and knights, saronged princesses and shopkeepers.

Unlike barbies and action figures, these toys are open-ended.  Undoubtedly, you'll say these toys give them the possibility to stretch their imaginations to their creative limits.  And you're right, of course.  They do all that.  With these simple toys children build an endless variety of castles and forts, worlds within worlds, and these toys become as much a part of the landscape of their childhood as the earth itself.

I can't argue with you when you say that open-ended toys grow with the child, sustaining the interests and fancies of an entire household of children, boys and girls alike, for years on end.  When you say these toys outlast childhood itself, much longer than the action figure of the week or this year's must-have, googly-eyed mess of faux-fur and plastic would have, I'll concede the point.

Though biodegradable, these natural toys are the ones you'll be saving in the attic for your grandchildren, you'll say.  You'll spend hours carefully wrapping your small, coveted collection of Ostheimers to pack away with the freshly-polished wooden kitchens, castles, and dollhouses.  That is, if you can bear to be separated from them yourselves.  Yes, I know how you people think.  You wish these were the toys of your own childhood, and you get all misty-eyed and wistful at the sight of them.  Somehow you think they heal your soul.

And I'm not here to argue that point.  I get where you're coming from.  Really, I'm one of you.  I covet the tiny wooden hedgehogs and chickens, sigh at the smooth contours of silk and polished wood, and collect my own menagerie of conkers and shells, acorn caps, stones and interesting sticks.  But I still have to ask.  Have you seen what your kids do with these toys?

I mean, when you're not looking?

All that open-ended play encourages them.  They start to think that they can pretend anything with a bit of stick and silk and string.  You might think that's a good thing, and before this morning, I would have agreed with you.  But I'm here to tell you, imaginative play is bad.  When your kids' imaginations run wild, anything can happen.  Eventually, this open-ended play will take them places that neither of you would expect.  Like the doctor's office.

I'm not kidding.

While I was doing some homeschool planning yesterday, some segment of my over-imaginative children got a bit carried away with their open-ended toys and came up with a game I'm going to call "Amputee Pirate Peg-leg."  That's right--  a stick, a string, and some silk, and voila!  I can see how they might think it was a fun idea.  I mean, who hasn't been fascinated by the idea of a peg-leg?!  How do they work?  Is it hard to walk?  Et cetera.

My clever children now know the answer.  After Kitty Bill's leg was tied up behind his back and a stick was firmly attached as a stump, he discovered that yes, it is hard to walk.  And when you fall over, it actually hurts.  A lot.  More than a lot.  In fact, even after removing your stump and untying your leg, it still hurts.  By the next morning the pain in your "previously-amputated" leg is so intolerable that your parents have very grim expressions when they drag you off to the doctor's office, naturally suspecting the worst.

Luckily, Kitty Bill gets to keep his leg, but what about next time?  It surely won't be the now-forbidden game of Amputee Pirate Peg-leg, but with these kinds of unhindered imaginations, who knows which of their dangerous games will do him in next.  Blind Horse Trio.  Food Chain.  Cliff Diver Hospital.  Runaway Horse.  The Librarian and the Plague Victim.  Rabid Wolf Family.  Siamese Triplets. The Princess, the Evil Governess, and the Crazy Guy with Daggers.*

Seriously, what is wrong with my children? It doesn't take much to set them off.  These open-ended toys stretch the imagination and almost beg for it.  With sticks and a bit of string, anything is possible.

Perhaps we should have just given them mainstream toys all along.**  I have trouble imagining how a child could come up with such willful games using Barbie and Spiderman, but children shouldn't be underestimated.  Ever.


*All actual games.  Yes, my kids are a bit strange.
** I'm joking... sort of.  ;) No, really, I'm joking.

Normal, freaky children

Something is going down at our house.

Sunburst seems to have developed a tic. She came home from the pool yesterday clearing her throat, "Ughm." She didn't swallow a frog or inhale any overwhelming amounts of chlorine, at least I don't think so. It appears to have just, ughm, happened on its own in this sudden, constant, and irritating way.

Einstein and I both noticed it right away.

"Ughm," we said to her. "Ughm. Ughm, ughm."

She looked at us with complete cluelessness and kept on ughming.

"Why are you doing that?" asked Einstein.

"Will you, ughm, stop, ughm. It's irritating." I said to her.

"Ughm," she said to us. "I can't, ughm, help it." And she was right. She couldn't. Her sudden reflexive throat-clearing noise was as much an unconscious part of her now as blinking. But goodness knows it was driving the rest of us insane. I googled around and found a lot of information on Tourette's Syndrome. And although it's one of those things that has a childhood onset, after only two hours of constant throat-clearing, it seemed a little fast to me to be making that kind of leap.

I only panicked for a minute before some dark recess of my brain remembered reading about normal childhood tics in the Ames and Haber books. They studied children for years at the Gesell Institute of Human Development and have a series of books out for each age. Yes, there are actual yearly manuals to help navigate the terrain of childhood, such as Your-Seven-Year-Old. When a friend first turned me onto these books, I thought she was crazy. A book is going to tell me about my child? My special, amazing, and unique child that these authors have never met? Yeah, right. And the moon will grow a thousand arms and start dancing the samba.

I was surprised how wrong I was. These books are great. I read them and sigh and know that my children are just as freaky as everybody else's children. That crying jag Moonshine went through because we changed the color of the shingles on our house? Normal. That phase Sunburst went through when she started pilfering vegan marshmallows out of the fridge? Normal. That cheetah persona she adopted years ago including running on four legs and pretending her friends were gazelles for the biting? Really weird and NOT normal, but we got through it anyway.

And what of this more recent urge to pee when faced with something difficult? I've been noticing this for a few months with Sunburst-- when we draw a new form or work on math or I ask her to help wash dishes., suddenly she has to pee. I figured it was an escape tactic, and was secretly pleased when she used it on Einstein the other day over practicing a new song on the piano. "She does this all the time, " I told him. "She's one of those Hall Pass kids... you know, the ones who were always running off to the bathroom in school." Apparently that's normal, too. Freaky, but normal, according to Ames and Haber:

"At eight, the most common of these outlets is a need to urinate when taxed with somethig he does not like or is unequal to. Dish-wiping is sure to be interrupted almost immediately after it's begun by a trip to the bathroom... A difficult school subject such as reading may produce a distended bladder in a very short time. This reaction may be thought of as "internal perspiration," emotionally induced. It is not just an alibi, as shown by the copiousness of the ensuing secretion."

Aside from specific behavioral tidbits, these books also describe the ages as going through times of equilibrium and disequilibrium, spiraling between the two, so that a child might spend half the year being pleasant and the other half acting like some monster from another planet. So far that seems to be how it works around here. And really it makes a lot of sense. The diseqilibrium helps them to make huge developmental leaps, just like sicknesses and short phases of completely aggrevating behavior, tantrums and so forth. A method to the madness, so to speak. And these books remind me of that and just make me feel better about everything, including throat-clearing.

Under the "Tensional Outlets" section of the Seven-Year-Old book I was pleased to read:

"There is, however, a certain amount of muttering and mumbling, loud breathing, and little throaty sounds."

Throaty sounds. Check. But little? No. Sometimes these books are off by a year, and you have to read the year before and after. The Six-Year-Old book actually has 'tics' listed in the index, as well as the section on Tensional Outlets:

"Facial grimaces, sometimes almost tic-like in nature, are frequent, and many make numerous, irritating throaty noises or throat-clearing."

Irritating throat-clearing? Check. But why? I racked my brain to figure out what triggered this sudden anxious reaction. Just before she went to the pool she overheard me on the phone with the doctor's office trying to get her an appointment. She's got an odd, tender bump on the back of her head. I think it might be an occipital lymph node, but just to be safe, we want someone to check it out.

At bedtime last night Sunburst asked me about the doctor and her bump. Bingo. She was worried. I tried to allay her fears the best I could and this morning she was tic-free until I brushed her hair and she remembered about the bump and started ughming all over again.