If you’d asked me a few years ago, whether we could successfully play hide and seek in our home (apartment, unit, whatever you want to call it), I would’ve probably laughed and said “No way”. Why? Well, let’s see. We live in a small 3 bedroom place. Three bedrooms, lounge/TV room, and kitchen. And that’s it. Well, okay there are sperate bathroom and toilet, but that really is it.
So how could we play hide and seek and actually have fun doing it? Where would we hide? Surely finding anyone, even a 5 year old, would be easy, and the game would quickly be over.
What we’ve found out though is that, even though it’s super simple to find people, and seriously I’m just under 6 feet tall how could I possibly hide effectively in our small home, we have a tremendous amount of fun playing. And it’s probably my son Jay’s favourite game.
How does that work? Let me give you an example. Just yesterday I was playing with Jay and he wanted me to hide. So I went to my bedroom and lied down pulling the cover up over my head. It barely covered me, and I’m pretty sure the top of my head was still showing if you looked from the right angle. Obviously it only took him a minute to find me, after thoroughly searching everywhere else in the unit. He may have actually realised where I was earlier, it just took me that long to know for sure he knew where I was.
Anyway, I knew he’d found me, partly from his sniggering, and partly that he changed what he had been saying up to that point. I should probably mention here that as we search we make a running commentary so that the other person (or people) will know what we’re doing and that we are actually looking for them. You know what I mean, “I wonder if he’s in the kitchen”, “I’ll check under the table”, “Let me look in the bathroom”. You get the idea.
So there he was in the bedroom with me under the covers, and he started talking about eating a cheese sandwich, sticking it in his ear, jumping on the bed, and so on. He was trying to get me to laugh, and I knew it. Eventually he jumped up on the bed and started slapping (not too hard) where I was, until I finally had enough and revealed myself.
Or what about when Jay hides? He’s got several places he likes to hide, and to be fair they are quite good and if you weren’t actively looking for him, you probably wouldn’t notice him there. Like under the table in the kitchen with the chairs pulled in. Or in the small bedroom behind the clothes hanging waiting to be ironed. Or under his study table in the middle bedroom. I could easily imagine him being in one of these hiding spaces and having us walk past him repeated without noticing him there.
But like I said, if you’re actively seeking then there’s no where, including these places that are very good at hiding you. At least not for very long.
We do like to have fun though, like trying to make the other person laugh so they reveal where they are hiding. Another thing we do is pretend that we can’t find them. My wife and I do that occasionally with Jay, just so it’s more fun. We each have a place that, if Jay is hiding there, we will continue searching becoming more and more confused about where he could be. Eventually we will give up and tell him we can’t find him and he’ll have to come out of hiding. He enjoys this thinking he’s got one over on us, although part of me wonders if he’s just humouring us and he knows we could find him but let him “win”. Either way, it’s all fun, and a game that he keeps wanting to play over and over and over again.
