I’ve often thought how interesting it is how children’s games and songs are passed along down the generations of children. It seems that, for the most part, these games and songs are not taught to children by the adults in their lives, but by each generation of children, one after the other.
Schoolyard games like Fox and Geese, Red Rover, Red Light Green Light, Mother May I, Hide and Seek, Kick the Can, and pick-up ball games. I remember scrub softball in the schoolyard of the country school I went to, and whiffle ball in our back yard, and in the inner cities, there was baseball played in the streets. Even the game of “House,” played mostly among girls, using what bits of dolls and doll dishes we might have between us, at least in my day. (“Let’s play house. I’ll be the mommy, and you be the kid.”)
And songs: no adult sits down and teaches children to sing “Eeny meeny miney mo” to make decisions. And when the words changed a bit from when I was a child, maybe adults hearing them sing the offensive words corrected them a few times, but today adults don’t sit down and teach this song with the new words. Kids just know them and pass them on that way.
Maybe certain party games like Ring Around the Rosie or Tisket a Tasket are taught in kindergarten, but most games one generation of children teaches the next, older kids teach younger kids.
Children’s jokes are also passed also from older kids to younger, and as they reach “a certain age” innocent silly dirty jokes are also passed this way.
And the same jokes, songs, and games I learned as a little girl in New York and Pennsylvania showed up in my own children’s play in Wisconsin. These things are carried not only down the ages of children, but also to every geographic area.
Even with broadcast media these days and children learning so much, of good and not-so-good, from media including television, computers, and handheld devices, children who are allowed to play outside and play with their friends learn and then pass along much of what I think of as the culture of childhood. When there ever comes a time when children get all their learning in school and from electronic media, and no longer learn it and pass it along with each other, it will be a sad day indeed.
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