Play is serious stuff

Last week I heard this super interesting bit on the CBC radio, about a French author who penned a book on the science and purpose behind children's play. He discussed, among other things, how a 7 year-old Einstein built elaborate 12-stories high castles made out of playing cards, or how the children of a Dutch optician during the Renaissance "invented" the telescope while playing with their father's glasses and realizing that if you placed two different ones at a certain distance, perhaps covering them with a bit of stiff fabric or paper to hold them in place, you could suddenly see things much bigger than they actually were in reality... I loved how he highlighted the fact that play is actually crucial in developing so many important real-life skills, like problem solving, goal achievements, perseverance, creativity, etc.

LP has a red locker-like toy storage cabinet in his bedroom. Its two doors can only be opened with a key. For years, the two tiny keys stayed in place. Then, inevitably, one of them broke in the lock earlier this year. No worries, I said, we can still open it with the one we have left. I put the remaining key on a shelf nearby, just out of the reach of F's little hands.

Then, a few months ago, just as inevitably, after a particularly chaotic play session between my two children, I found the locker doors closed and the key nowhere in sight. LP didn't know where it was. We'll find it around, I said, wishful-thinkingly.

But we didn't. So we couldn't open the thing anymore. No worries, I said, the next time we go to IKEA we'll ask them for spare keys... For sure they'll have them... But when we finally did, well, they didn't. They explained that there were several dozen series made, and that these weren't all available anymore. We got the one we thought looked like the closest match. It didn't work.

Yesterday LP, fed up by not having access to all these wonderful toys anymore, decided to take matters into his own hands. All by himself, he closely examined the lock, then went on searching for an object that seemed to match the key hole. He finally found it, in the form of a very thin, profiled fridge magnet.

We heard him cheer wildly in his room. He had opened the door.

The key was inside.