Strike the Match🧸🌈🦄

There’s a wooden gate on Pip’s farm, and for about 3 weeks, on and off, I opened it and helped a sheep out.

That was it. That was the whole activity. I’d sit down on the rug near her, swing the little gate open, walk a sheep out of the pen, and set it down somewhere in the middle of the room. Then I’d do it again with a different animal. I didn’t announce it. I didn’t say “look, Mummy’s opening the gate.” I didn’t ask her if she wanted a turn. I just did it- the way you’d do anything you were quietly absorbed in, and she carried on with whatever she was doing 3 feet away.

Then one afternoon I looked over and she had opened the gate.

And here’s the part I actually want to write about - she didn’t do what I did. She took every animal out. All of them. Then she put the pig back in on its own and shut the gate on it, and looked at it. Then she took the pig out again. Then she put a wooden block in the pen instead. Whatever she was working out, it wasn’t mine. I’d given her the gate. She built the rest.

That’s modelling play, and that’s the whole promise of it. You strike the match. They decide what to burn.