Time to Play

As kids, my brother and I used to record radio shows on our little cassette recorder. Nothing too special of course; I found some recordings a while ago and it mostly amounts to myself telling him exactly what to say in order to feed my precocious lines or reading poetry out of a book then telling him to say why he loved the poem. Which he didn’t; he was a boy, boys don’t do poetry; he was eight, eight year olds don’t get the subtle nuances of poems; he had a trainset, which is far more fun than making pretend radio shows with a bossy, pretentious big sister.

But I had a jingle and everything.

It was a clever use of the title of the book and made a classic tune: “We’re looking oooout of the Poet’s Wiiiiindoooooow-ooooo-oh-aaaaah-oooooh”


There is much talk of how kids today have no idea how to play, that television and the internet has rendered them incapable of making their own entertainment as we did back then… but something happened this week which made me realise that in fact things really are no different.


I have certain essentials on me whenever I leave the house. Inside whatever bag I happen to be using that day is a little bag containing (amongst other things) pens, a small notepad, nail glue, scissors, my non-music mp3 player (as in the one with podcasts, Welsh lessons and radio shows) and a Dictaphone and external mic (oh, and The Book… not nagged you for a while, so BUY IT!!). Baby had kicked off as we were leaving the house about not wanting to go out with me, so chose to ignore my demands that she take her homework or some toys with which to pass the time.

And this was a Wednesday, child one’s violin lesson which should be half an hour, not enough time to get home and back but ends up being closer to an hour which would be. So baby and I were sitting in the car outside the violin lesson for what ended up being a little over a full hour (incidentally, I don’t complain about this as I am effectively getting half-price lessons, so ‘whatever’!) and to stop the whining, I gave her my bag and settled for just reading The Book. (I know, it’s a chore but I made it through it again!)

There were notes I needed on the Dictaphone, so on returning home I went to listen back and found a batch of unlabelled recordings; some from events I had attended a while ago and forgotten all about, some to be filed into the ‘things I should write about at a later date’ folder, but then came baby’s voice:

“Hello and welcome to this brand new podcast”


Funniest thing was her face when she came into the room and realised I was listening to her. An expectant grin as she knew what was awaiting me.

Then I hear something, amidst the ‘Shout-out’ section (yea, she’s a real pro!)

Now, had I thought of a shout-out section, I am sure my poetry show would have been far better. But I didn’t.

And as she reeled off hellos and pretend Happy Birthdays to various actors and cartoon voice-overs she inexplicably holds the names of, I hear “and a shout out on my mum’s behalf to Chris Corcoran. Otherwise known as Korkey. Or that bloke from off of Doodle-do.”

And through her laughter as she watched me listen, she said “---sorry--- really--- so sorry --- I-just--- had to – I know you hate that --- just---- I can’t even --- your face---- I know ---- it’s too funny --- but I am sorry though”


And I am aware that makes little sense if you haven’t read my rambling fangirl nonsense, so here’s a little screencap of my minor rant from so long ago:

But anyway, getting bogged down in the detail again…

Point is this:

Has the constant input from direct media killed the imagination of our children? Absolutely not.

They might play through different mediums, yet still the imaginative creativity is the same.

Kids still play at schools, it’s just that their cardboard-box desks have laptops drawn on them, their makeshift blackboards are white with interaction buttons of playdough stuck along the edges, baby-doll pupils giggle and cry electronically throughout lessons and the cage containing the class pet zhu-zhus is a very noisy one indeed. But the game remains the same.

The ultimate toy of creativity would have to be Lego. Baby loves playing with my old collection and will spend hours building, but is far happier spending her time creating on Minecraft as she does not have to deconstruct at the end of the day. Is it any less creative? Actually I’d say more so, because as well as the un-ending build, she also has to make her building materials. (I don’t play myself, but I gather there is some process of using a furnace and selecting ingredients…) Were the makers of Lego to send you a bucket of plastic beads and colourings I very much doubt many would feel inclined to build anything whatsoever. Because there is no trace when she closes down the computer, does this make the process of her creation any less valid? Of course not.

It is claimed that children do not know how to create their own characters as everything is pictoralised for them but I think the opposite is true. It seems clear to me that what our children are to learn from the visual onslaught is that the mind can create quite literally anything; that the only limits are our own imaginations. Characters when I was growing up were generally just personified animals, vehicles or household objects but nowadays there is such a range that they feel compelled to create their own weird and wonderful beings. Some of the creatures drawn by baby and her friends really are quite something!



Things have not changed that much if you step back and watch how your kids are actually playing whilst they think you are not around.

Anyhoo…

Rant over.

And in other news; after her little delve into the world of recording baby thinks a weekly podcast would be great fun! I think not.

But baby has a habit of winning these discussions, so I’ll be in the office digging out my copy of The Poet’s Window ready for the poetry section just in case.