Silent Football

2/8/2024

The following is an over-emphasized account of how peculiar the process of understanding the mind and desires of young children is, from the perspective of one after-school YMCA employee. Ironically, with this particular group of children, I performed the character of scientist, wearing a filthy white sun suit and routinely removing a small notebook and pen from the right, inside breast pocket of my suit jacket. When I stopped, for fear of getting too carried away, some children asked, “why aren’t you taking notes?” To which I responded, pointing to my head, “oh don’t worry, I am.” Those notes are included here.

Red and Blue Group

Approx. 25 Members In Total

Grades 4th and 5th

February 2024

School Not Disclosed

The primary aim of the majority of members of the 4th and 5th grade community is, or seems to be, to win. More than the desire to move, the desire to win fuels all actions. As a result, cheating is extremely prevalent. No matter the game, these children will always find a way to cheat. In conversations with them, the notion of limiting, or ending, one’s cheating is almost as confusing as the notion of performing a 100 meter footrace at a walking pace. The eyes, incidentally, are completely lacking of any comprehension.

The reason, of course, is that cheating is the most efficient way to win. Rules exist to make games fair, and increase their repeatability. But one must only win once for it to count, and it was never supposed to be fair to begin with. After all, not everyone can win.

We fool ourselves into thinking that children will choose empathy over selfishness. While empathy is what all humans would say, in a blind test, that they want to see (consider, of course, the “golden rule”), the modern world caters much more to selfishness. Listening closely to the world around them, any logical thinker would jump to the conclusion that selfishness leads to success. Therefore, I can’t fault anyone for acting on it.

Many years ago, the exact number I refuse to calculate, a friend of mine taught me a game called Silent Football. The original origin the game escapes me, but she too worked with children, and I would not be the least bit surprised that it came from those experiences. Regardless, when it was taught to me, as well as the only times I played the game in the following year or two, I was purely in the company of adults.

The game, which I will not bore you with the operations of, is all about order. Rule followers thrive just as much as snitches. To play, a very simple set of rules must be followed at all costs. If a rule is broken, it is often up to the players to inform the leader of the game. But, there are rules regarding how a broken rule is presented to the leader. Therefore, to win at this game, which, following my hypothesis from above, is the aim of every child, one must never break a rule.

Today, after banging my head against a wall trying to make everyone happy with a game of King’s Treasure (or, as I learned it, One Bear, Two Bear) despite rampant cheating, I was left with a small enough group of students to where the game fell apart. For context, my group lasts only as long as it takes for their parents to pick them up. Seeking a new game, several of them sat in a circle, which reminded me of the only other game I enjoy playing: Silent Football.

The result was phenomenal, and my too most disruptive students, D1 and D2, ended the game with the least amount of infractions. Children who, about an hour before, had struggled heavily with teamwork and fine-motor skills, respected and enjoyed this silly game enough to play it for almost another whole hour.

Now, this game is certainly not magic, and is it far from guaranteed to produce the same result tomorrow, but it provided me a good reminder. You can’t rule anyone out. Not everyone thrives in every environment, but I haven’t come across anyone who doesn’t thrive somewhere.

While certainly more for a childcare audience, and I hope they find it, I include this story here because this season of my blog is all about exploration. And because a friend of mine told me to approach each day, not with dread, but with a curious mind, pretending to be a scientist collecting data, or an explorer. And that is exactly how I felt today.

(Self-Timer, February 8, 2024)