How do you entertain a group of small boys for the day? Take them to a skip, of course.
This week, my son’s school was closed for an “inset day”. As is tradition on inset days, several of us had forgotten all about it, which meant a last-minute panic to place the kids. Because I work from home (and by “work” we mean this, so, you know, it’s a relative term) and have just the one child, I am always very happy to scoop up a few extra playmates for the day. After all, there are only so many times I can watch someone hit a ball of snot at a wall. Which meant I found myself in charge of a group of four boys, all under the age of six, with no plan. As the comedian, author and heart-throb Rob Delaney puts it: “A house with three boys can seem like a ramshackle zoo on the edge of town: loud, dangerous and terrifying to the observer.” This is very much a mode I lean into. In fact, at one point during the morning I looked down and noticed that I was standing, in a set of blue overalls, chopping up fruit, which I then laid out on a tray and threw on to the floor of my son’s bedroom, before walking steadily and swiftly towards the door. All I needed was a tetanus shot and a name badge and I was effectively running an animal sanctuary.
There is a great skip I know – I won’t tell you where, because we unregistered childcare practitioners have to keep some trade secrets – that gets regularly filled with old lamps, keyboards, extractor fans, circuit boards and cables. The stuff, in short, of every young engineer’s dream. This, I decided, would be our destination. Among child psychologists and playground designers, there is an increasing move towards opportunities for so-called “risky play” within early childhood. Tools, mud, heights, hard surfaces, moving parts, unfinished flooring: everything, in short, that would have had my mother wincing and shielding her eyes. This sort of play environment, it is said, expands children’s understanding of their own limits, helps them assess dangers, stretches them physically (hopefully not literally) and builds resilience. During one of the miserable winter lockdowns, I took my son to pick up some tools from the wheelhouse of my friend’s boat. There were gas canisters, tarpaulins, buttons, old paint pots, screwdrivers and something to do with a bilge pump. He was occupied for at least an hour and, lo, what I called “hard play” was born.
Anybody who has had to spend more than 16 minutes at a soft play centre – probably in an overheated leisure complex, surrounded by skin-sticking plastic cubes and sweat-smelling crash mats, while commercial radio blares and screamingly contagious children wipe their liquid faces across balls and slides and toys – knows that it is a scam. It’s a racket. Better by far to take your small charges to a place full of things that look nothing like a children’s play area: a builder’s merchants, a riverbank, a Decathlon, a timber yard, a beach, a railway bridge, a nature reserve. As a newly toddling biped, my son had more fun in an Ikea on London’s North Circular than he ever had at the many rhyme times, singing concerts and stay-and-plays I dragged him to. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: children don’t give a toss about toys.
So, once the banana had all been thoroughly pasted between my floorboards and enough juice had been spilled on the floor, I decided it was time to take my knee-height army to the skip. Each member wore a rucksack that they could fill with whatever they liked, on the condition that they carried it back themselves. And so began one of the happiest afternoons I’ve had for months. Watching them lean over the skip edge, rifling through abandoned door knobs and push-button telephones, was like a scene from a natural history documentary – like crows trying to open cans of lager or bears trying to eat a phone box. They were all so thrilled with their finds: an old venetian blind, two computer mice, a broken vacuum cleaner getting more love than the £25 worth of Pokémon merchandise.
As we marched home, our bags hitting our knees, we talked about all the robots we were going to make, the cable ties and gaffer tape we’d make use of. Did we sound like underage kidnappers? Perhaps. Did I care? Not in the least.
Forget playgrounds and toys; when it comes to early years, I’m sticking with drainpipes and pliers.
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Nell Frizzell is the author of Holding the Baby: Milk, Sweat and Tears from the Frontline of Motherhood
