Let’s make a DEN
There’s nothing more magical for children – or grown-ups — then making a tech-free cave
A SUNDAY afternoon, and one of those days when afternoon boredom sets in.
My daughter Kitty and her family were staying with us while their new kitchen was installed, and we were also looking after my threeyear-old grandson Barnaby while his parents were working.
So he had to be entertained with Kitty’s daughter Chloe, who’ll also be three in September. In a moment of inspiration Kitty cried out: ‘I know, let’s make a den — like when I was a child!’
In no time she had pulled four chairs out and set them with the backs facing each other, about a metre apart. I provided two throws, plus a red-checked tablecloth — enough to drape over the chairs to create roof, walls and a door.
In went a small pile of cushions — and the children followed, squealing with delight. We added plastic plates for a pretend meal . . . and, once again, old-fashioned play exerted its timeless magic.
A Den. Somewhere to hide, whisper, giggle and make-believe. A castle or a fort or a playhouse or a witch’s cottage in the woods or even an underground cave — all from four chairs and some fabric.
It cost nothing, and there wasn’t an expensive plastic toy, piece of merchandising or item of technological wizardry in sight.
What’s more, as a mother and grandmother I confess that a large part of my fun came from witnessing Kitty’s own.
A fantastic mum and aunt, she was enacting her own childhood happiness — and that gave me real pleasure. I was so pleased I put this little story on Facebook — and was amazed by the enthusiastic response from all ages.
Such happy memories were shared — like this, for example: ‘I just reminisced the other day on here with a friend my own age — 57 — about how a travelling rug flung over a lowered clothes rope in the garden and pegged was our tent.
NO FANCY Wendy houses, gazebos, or proper wood cabin, as many children have nowadays. Just a small formica picnic table and simplest of picnic chairs, or we sat on the grass or on the steps. Bushes were our hiding places, weeds were what we “cooked” in toy pans, and our teddies and dolls “ate” that. Chalk and a skipping rope were our main essentials.’
Somebody else wrote: ‘Seeing this brought back such happy memories — my grandma used to build dens for/with me — she was about 70 and I was between four and six.
‘Once the tablecloths and sheets had been arranged and pegged into place, she would make tiny sandwiches and a pot of orange squash “tea” and get in there with me. I still miss her after all these years — but returned the compliment and did the same for my sons and now plan to do the same for my granddaughter. Thank you!’
There were memories of dens made with piles of cushions, or ‘a huge empty cardboard box which had once housed a chest freezer, taken home, the flaps formed into a peaked r oof, a door and windows cut out’. In 1992 that lady’s sons ‘had a ball for weeks with this construction as their gang-hut’.
Many more posts in the same vein revealed a powerful sense of tradition: the simple ideas for play that are handed on between the generations. No wonder I felt such deep-seated delight at Kitty’s own reminiscences, triggered by her spontaneous idea. She recalled dens in the garden and oldfashioned party games organised by her dad and l etters written to her by her doll (I was good at tiny printing) and other sweet memories. She also loved a mad game aptly called Frustration and interminable games of Snakes and Ladders and Ludo — the very ones I used to play with my brother as a child.
You can’t dismiss such thoughts as mere nostalgia. They touch on something of incalculable value within family life.
It’s telling that a new study has found board games (and other sorts of play) are falling out of favour because children are too busy with technology.
No surprise there — but for me the significant finding is that more than two-fifths of the children mourn the lack. They feel they don’t spend enough time playing games with their parents.
The researchers found that computer gaming among children aged seven to 14 has doubled within a generation and threefifths of the children play these on their own. But only a quarter of children have learned to play chess, compared with almost half of the parents when they were young.
In turn, many parents worry that this is having an adverse effect on their children’s development — in that the kids are not gaining the same skills they had when growing up.
One of which is, surely, making a den. Compare things as different as creating a den from chairs or a box and learning to play draughts or an old- fashioned game like Happy Families.
What they have in common is parental involvement and patience. To sit a child down in front of a screen (TV, tablet or smartphone) t akes j ust seconds. To play requires time.
The point is, no child of three is going to think of making a den or playing a game alone. It takes the parent to say, in effect: ‘Let’s do this. Let’s turn ordinary things like chairs and a tablecloth into something magical.’
Hands- on parenting involves just such simple ideas — and giving the concentrated, loving attention necessary to put them into practice. Alone, a younger child isn’t going to go and play Pooh- sticks or create a pretend picnic with a couple of teddies or banish rainy- day blues with a game of Ludo inside that den.
But if a mum or dad (or granny) comes up with the idea, instilling the habit of creative play, then the kids will remember and go on to create their own imaginative games. The den, you see, is an idea as well as a reality. French philosopher Gaston Bachelard has written eloquently about the essential human need for secret spaces to withdraw to, because they ‘shelter day-dreaming’.
WHEN I was a child, growing up in a council f l at, there was a ‘ dining alcove’ at one end of the living room. The dining table was only used at Christmas (we ate all our meals in the kitchen) and I remember i t covered with a chenille-type cloth under which I could hide — and just dream. Even then I needed that respite.
Surely the need to make dens in childhood is linked to the well-known adult need for sheds and other hideaways. There’s a phrase currently in use on social media which goes something like: ‘If you want me I’ll be in my home-made fort, colouring in.’
It’s a joke that conceals a truth about human nature.
For there we have two ‘childish’ pastimes rolled into one and used to express an adult need to escape from the information-mad world of technology that dominates our lives. The current craze for adult colouring books has taken the world by surprise, but I understand it, just as I know that dens symbolise far more than just oversized table-cloths and chairs shoved together.
Such pastimes involve quietness and calm and time to withdraw. They give space to think and exercise the imagination and dream . . . and then emerge rested. We all require that healing respite from the jangling world. It is essential to their development that small children need to learn how to play within their dens of imagination. Only we can teach them — and in so doing we can remind ourselves how to be.