I’m playing chasey with two little girls; one is seven and the other is nine. We are on our bikes in the car park, racing around in the end of the daylight between their dinnertime and mine. Of course, neither of them wants to be ‘it’, so I’m chasing them and it’s actually lots of fun. Our movement on the bikes in the little car park suggests an aquarium to me; I become a growling shark and they are little fishies. Neither of them have had a bike for very long so its a bit of a challenge for them to be riding around in a small-ish space, controlling the bike, avoiding the parked cars, watching for traffic and pedestrians but also for where I am too. Every time I get near them they squeal and shout in horrified pleasure as they try to dart away, but if I’m not chasing them they soon come in close to tease me.

The older girl can tolerate being ‘it’ for a short while, but she quickly wants me to go back to being ‘it ‘. The younger girl cannot tolerate being ‘it’ at all, and whenever she gets into a position where she may become ‘it’, she stops and invents a rule. The first rule is Pause, where she puts both feet on the ground and says “Pause” loudly, and suddenly she becomes invisible; I can smell the little fishy but I cant see her. Subsequently she invents a number of more intricate and involved rules. On the one occasion where her sister manages to sneak up on her and catch her, she breaks down and wails, devastated. We stop and ask her why she’s crying, why she is unhappy about being ‘it’, and what we can do to fix it. We negotiate some more rules, and then the game is back on again.

But there is more to this, far more to this game than meets the eye. I have learned much in the last two years that fills out the details and saturates the colours of this little scene. I know that the younger girl has been sexually abused. I know that this is likely to have had an impact on her older sister. In the context of this, I know that both the girls are playing with fear; rehearsing it, learning to modulate it, and trying out different responses to it. I know that they are enjoying the role reversal, where the children dictate the rules and the adult is ‘it’. I know that the little girl is playing with her autonomy; making rules about what will and won’t happen to her, experiencing having those rules respected, gaining the confidence to make more rules, having them respected too. I know that she is rehearsing the experience of feeling afraid and then finding ways to deal with the fear, discovering and putting into practice new ways of dealing with it as she thinks of them. I realise that this is a small part of the healing process for her, and the more often we can repeat it the better. I realise anew how important play is for children, and how these little games are an arena where some of the big things in life get worked out.

The game is a hit. All too quickly the sun is setting and so we ride home, back down the lane, and the older girl asks “Can we play the fishy game again?” Hmmm, no, this is not a fishy game. Perhaps next time we will play lions and deer. And so we do. We play it all Summer.

• felix (New York) said on 07/11/09 at 09:23 AM.....

  What a wonderful story!  Loved the writing.

• MissSin (Grey Deskland) said on 07/11/13 at 11:32 AM.....

  beautiful.

• Fiona said on 07/11/16 at 03:02 PM.....

  Damage done is all around (and sometimes within) us, all sorts of damage. Like Pan says in my favourite Tom Robbins book - let’s play and lighten up! It’s better therapy than wallowing… Lovely story, full of insight.