Masters of chaos

“Oh no,” you think, “She’s going to write about the government again. Maybe she started to watch the Kenneth Branagh portrayal of Boris Johnson.”

I have started to watch it and it is jaw-droppingly terrifying but I’m not talking about the governments. It’s kids.

Children create chaos. 

It is completely exhausting to work with children and every year, the older you get, the more tired you feel. And their chaos never happens at the same time.  Playing whack-a-mole with 30 small people all day is just tiring.

But they are funny. Their chaos and unpredictability is what makes them endearing.

It was my playground duty and there is nothing better than seeing children bomb around a playground. It seems unstructured but there are very clear rules to this unregulated group behaviours. There are the girls who do handstands by the wall: The naughty kids all congregate around the shed: The goody-two-shoes hang around the adventure playground near where the teachers usually stand, in the hope of being chosen to get the bell: The same children are always hanging upside down from the rope ladder. It just looks like chaos but if you are observant you can spot the patterns.

There are always a group of children who prefer adult company and will stand happily chatting to the teacher on duty. There is always one who tries to trick them by tapping them on the back and running away. However, even these children are creators of chaos. 

As I was chatting I put my hand in my pocket and found the things I had asked the dog to ‘drop’ on that morning’s walk. He likes to pick things up, as he goes and not everything is appropriate. There were a couple of rosehips, a conker, a teasel (ooh that’s spiky) and several acorns. I showed the mini adults and they all ran off, which was quite surprising. Maybe collecting nature’s treasures in your pocket was too childish a thing for them to associate with, I thought. I was wrong. They soon ran back clutching fistfuls of acorns. 

When I got home last night, my pockets felt much heavier than normal. Inside where many more acorns than I had before (and a twix wrapper). It seems as though surreptitiously posting acorns into my coat pocket has become the new tap the teacher on the back game.

I write this as a warning and an apology to my colleagues. Just as I appear to have trained my dog to pick up inappropriate things so that he can drop them and collect a treat, I have accidentally invented a new playground game.