Playing Babies

Every day the children engage in some sort of dramatic play.  For some it is their preferred activity choice.  Others would rather build with blocks or read a book but will occasionally join the group for some type of dramatic play.

Sometimes they set up a store, restaurant or repair shop.  Often they pretend they are characters from movies or TV shows.  The most common theme though, is ‘families’ – parents and children and pets negotiating through their everyday routine.

The group I currently have enrolled always calls it ‘playing babies’.  This is probably because ‘the baby’ is the most popular role.  In fact, it is not unusual for there to be five or six babies and only one adult.  The gender of the adult is irrelevant but the child in the adult role is always there reluctantly.

Every one of them wants to be a baby or occasionally a cat – which acts just like a baby but it meows.  These babies are always horrible – cranky, demanding, inconsolable babies that trash the house and never sleep or eat the food they are given and they always have dirty diapers.

These babies drive me crazy and I’m not even playing the game.  The poor lone adult is always frazzled and near tears – no wonder no one wants that role.   I wanted to make the adult role more appealing.  Maybe if there were more adults the babies wouldn’t be so wild and disruptive.

I added some new stuff to the basket – several cell phones and some credit cards;

The new items were very popular and for a short period of time there were more adults.  They were somwhat annoying adults.  Some of them were the former babies which were now teenagers.  They were always bickering over which cell phone was the best and threatening to call the police over every disagreement.

They went on wild shopping sprees with their credit cards.  The few babies that were left would throw tantrums in the stores – demanding the adults buy them things.  The adults would clutch their credit cards and laugh “I’m rich and it’s all mine and you aren’t getting anything”.

Which prompted me to point out that using a credit card usually means they haven’t got enough money to pay for something and they have to borrow money and pay it back later.

So now there are no more pretend adults – just pretend babies – horrible, cranky, inconsolable pretend babies.  Yet, they all think the real babies we have here are absolutely adorable.