Den Building

[Rebecca]

This article was really interesting, so I'd like to post it here for further discussion. I remember building forts and always looking for a quiet place to slip away. I loved to hang out in a tree where no one would notice me. But, I've noticed that my older son, who is nearly 9, doesn't really know what to do outside and he's never built a "den" inside, either.

I thought this was interesting in that it brings up another part of childhood that seems to be missing. What skills are our children missing because they aren't doing these things we did as kids (or have been part of childhood forever...until now.). I like the opportunity to look at things differently. It allows me to stay in a conscious place in parenting.

Let me know your thoughts about this article! I'll try to post the whole thing in another post.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,1754053,00.html

[Rebecca]

The nesting instinct


Building a den is great for encouraging children's imagination and reinforces their sense of self. But, as Josie Barnard discovers, one of the great pleasures of childhood is having to be relearned

Saturday April 15, 2006
The Guardian

The two sofas were upturned in the bay window, the coffee table was on its side, stuff was strewn everywhere round the living room - cushions, blankets, even hacked-up bits of Christmas tree. Burglars? A crudely written message was Blu-Tacked to the wall: "No adults!" Ah, just the kids, den-making.
Even though my two children are aged six and 10, up until a few weeks ago they hadn't ever made a single den. In fact, I hadn't really thought much about dens since my own den-rich childhood. That is, until BBC Radio 4 asked me to research them for their programme, Questions, Questions.

Yet, once Louis, Ynys and their friend Pelumi had free rein of the living room, and were told they had to create a den so that I could record the process, they went at it with a vengeance. The sheer gusto with which they dismantled and reassembled the living room in a way that excluded adults made me feel bad that they hadn't been doing it every day.
But we are not alone. New research by academics in the US and Scandinavia is showing both that dens are crucial to children's development - and that the opportunities for and inclination of children to make them are in danger of disappearing completely.

When Roger Hart, New York's City University's environmental psychologist, researched dens in Vermont in the 70s, he found that 86 children, aged three to 12 years in one town, had made at least one den. His follow-up research is showing that, today, hardly any of the children in that same town have dens at all and, those who do, have pre-manufactured ones. One child, when asked to name his "secret place", called to his mother for help in identifying such a spot.

Hart believes a variety of factors are affecting children's lives out of doors. Families are generally smaller in number and often both parents work, so scarcer time together means that fewer children get less attention, and when they get it, the parents tend to feel more anxious about their children's welfare. Outdoor spaces are also becoming increasingly limited in what they offer because of fear of litigation, and the increased availability of electronic media lures children indoors. But, perhaps, above all, there is parents' fear of letting children out alone.

The book critic Dinah Hall has noted a near-total absence of dens in contemporary children's literature. "Parents are too paranoid about letting children out of their sight to even be able to bear a den in a work of children's fiction," she says. "The most you're going to get is a lovely, but very tame den, under a table in a Shirley Hughes picture book."

In Norway, the situation has been judged so grave that the government has actually been paying children to make dens for the past decade through a project called "Try Yourself" - yes, paying children to do something that one might think should be an automatic, unquestioned part of childhood. Anne Trine Kjorholt, a child-researcher at the University of Trondheim, has argued that the Norwegian government's project reflects "children as an endangered people".

An endangered people, just because they can't wreck a bit of their environment? Dens are piecemeal, scrappy-looking and rarely that permanent. Why, exactly, are they so important?

Almost everyone you talk to over the age of about 25 has memories of den-making that make their eyes light up. A round-robin email between friends, wondering if anyone had any den-related memories, elicited a surprising number of responses. Alastair recalls using rubber-band guns to keep his sisters out of his dens, and holding the cat hostage when necessary. The den in Sarah's bedroom was constructed so that she and her friend could, using knives, skewers and screwdrivers, dig through the wall and spy on the au pair on the toilet.

"The den is the child's sense of self being born," says David Sobel, a developmental psychologist at Antioch New England graduate school. He has researched dens extensively since the 70s, in Devon, England, and the Caribbean. "In the middle childhood, ages seven to 11, a den is the child's chance to create a home away from home that is secret, and becomes a manifestation of who they are. The den," Sobel argues, "is the chrysalis out of which the butterfly is born."

One correspondent, who prefers to remain anonymous, says that his developing sense of self was very bound up with dens. "I was a constant den-maker," he remembers. "In fact, my entire youth, from the age of about four to 14, was spent constructing them, initially with dressing gowns and curtains. Then, later, mud pits were a speciality. Once we dug a hole about four feet deep and covered it with branches, leaves and moss, and monitored traffic on the nearby road, SAS style. All well and good until a sheep fell in and had to be rescued by a farmer. And later, that same day, we were given a roasting by the driver of a Citroen 2CV for throwing eggs at the car (clearly, we were not that well hidden)."

Already, this is enough to make many parents shudder, if only because of the thought of the amount of washing that must have been necessary afterwards. Maria Kylin, of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, has researched dens from the urban planner's perspective. She believes they are critical because, "They allow children to experience danger in a secure environment. They are places in which children can challenge themselves, mentally and physically, in preparation for the rigours of adulthood."

Sobel recalls a pivotal den experience of his own childhood: "There was an older boy in my neighbourhood whose fort was a completely mysterious and alluring place for me." Yet, when the young Sobel did, finally, thrillingly gain access, it became clear that, "I was the day's entertainment." He was required to leave his trousers in the den and walk home humiliated. He concludes soberly, "The fort was the world with its own rules, away from adults."

During her research, Kjorholt also found that dens are about learning to be adults. In many of the cases in Norway, she discovered that the help of adults was actively solicited, particularly by boys over the age of about 10, whose dens, out in the forest, tended to become sophisticated huts. Grandfathers were asked to help saw wood, fathers were asked for advice on appropriate insulation material for wall cavities. And both father and grandfather were then enlisted to help transport materials in wheelbarrows. The boys wanted the men involved, because they were learning how to be men.

And Maria Kylin believes it's not just possible, but essential, to start incorporating the principles of den-making in urban planning. Her research, as a landscape architect, of children aged nine to 13 in a small town in Sweden, has convinced her that children and adults perceive their physical environment in ways that are fundamentally at odds.

"Adults have a visual aesthetic. They want a space to be functional, beautiful and, generally, clean, that to a child's eye is barren. Kids don't experience a space primarily through visuals. They are interested in what they can do in it. They like bushes. They like hidden corners. As urban planners, for example, we can look at the walk to school, we can look at open spaces in housing blocks and try to make them not only secure, but also challenging."

Sobel, following a successful pilot scheme with Steiner schools, is fighting to get den-building included in the curriculum. He reports that teachers find the dens the children have built themselves prove particularly conducive to meditative activities, such as writing journals. The toy company Mattel has been so struck by the potential of dens to improve creative thinking, that in their US head office they've installed one, complete with a life-sized tree trunk - a place where its (adult) employees are sent to brainstorm.

But what can be done for our own children, now?

For a start, don't book up a hotel or cottage for the summer holidays. Dust off your tent and take them camping. Then let them slip off to the hedgerows with their peers, to make mischief. If you live in the country or have a large garden, great. Send your kids off this minute, with hammers and nails and a picnic, and instructions to not come back until teatime.

Or, get the bits and pieces of cushions and old covers and broom handles that Sobel would call the essential "loose parts". Cook up some really nasty feast that will serve, once the den is finished, to "consecrate" the space (I used to flavour raw jelly cubes; prawn cocktail crisps dipped in hot chocolate can also go down well.) Then, get the vacuum cleaner ready, snap on your rubber gloves, and - give the kids the living room.

Continued...

[Rebecca]

Making a forest den

Select a site

· The "forest" could be in a back garden or local park, but woodland provides more excitement

· Make sure there is plenty of dead wood in the area to use as building materials

· Find a feature that could be used as a starting point, such as a large log or a leaning branch

· Avoid hollows, which will become waterlogged, or dense canopies of leaves, which will continue to drip for a long time after rain

Construct the den

· Collect three long branches to form the basic structure. Bind them together at the apex with string or stems such as blackberry runners, honeysuckle or wild clematis

· Secure additional branches along one side to make a framework, again binding them in place with natural materials

· Weave smaller twigs and stems through the framework to create a lattice. This must be able to provide a firm mesh suitable for supporting a thatch of leaf litter and grass

· Lay leaves and grasses over the lattice at ground level and working upwards

· The finer details will depend on the children, they may wish, for example, to sweep the floor to clear a smooth place to sit with their friends, or to build up layers of leaf litter to create a soft bed

· This is an extract from Nature's Playground by Fiona Danks and Jo Schofield (Frances Lincoln)

[Annie]

The thing I am sad about is that my kids don't have the opportunity to just wander around, out in nature.... Frankly, I think my older "Russians" had the good fortune to be able to do that! But my younger ones, and my bio kids always have been "watched", more or less. I grew up in the Colorado foothills, and remember taking off and wandering up into the hills, finding paths, spending hours away, all by myself. I almost shudder thinking about it - how lucky I didn't fall victim to some rapist or thug. But, I am so grateful that I had all that time alone with God. Something my children really don't have. (Actually, they do build dens, though.)

[greenbeanbanshee]

This is a really interesting thread to me. I keep going back and rethinking it all. There are so many things like this in our society today. Things that our grandparents did, but that we aren't teaching to our children. It's really very sad.

Just by chance, we live a simpler life and are home together everyday. So my kids have loved "den building", as it's called here. We have always called it building "forts". But, a rose by any other name.......

Just this morning my kids attached blankets to the bunkbeds to make an enclosure, and then used our lanterns (wind up) to sort of camp out inside there, doing who knows what for almost 2 hours straight. Which is great for me! We always keep king size sheets in the toy boxes and they are always free to tear apart the cushions on the couch, move the kitchen table around, etc, to make whatever structure they want that day. I'd say in all, my kids probably build a fort about twice a week, without any suggestions from us. And these are just the inside ones.

Outside is whole other matter! We have some permanent "dens" that we've constructed for them. I built my daughter a little playhouse. (Yes, me with power tools and all!) They also have a tree house up in an apple tree. But the grand finale is what we affectionately refer to as "Tire World". We took a whole bunch of recycled tires and made a big....well.....what would you call it besides a world? There just aren't any other words. The tires are so large that you can crawl though them and up to the second story. There are also ladders and one little window to peek out of. My kids have dishes out there and signs posted and it's sort of a "no grownups allowed" type of thing. It's sooooo cool.

I don't know who likes these types of things more -- me or them. All I know is that I grew up in the country and this was our main form of entertainment, so it just comes naturally to my kids, I guess.

I'd love to hear what other families on this forum are doing. Dens (forts) can be such a huge bonding experience.

~Bethany

[Jackie]

Rebecca - This is so very interesting to me. I don't think I would be who I am today without my time to develop apart from my parents. We all built forts in our neighborhood. I didn't know that people who lived in Europe have changed in regard to fears for children's safety when they are out alone. I wonder why that is such a common type of change in many places on the globe. Any ideas? Thank you for sharing this!

~Jackie

[owla]

My kids are not a whole lot interested in hiding away from me yet. We have a tipi where my daughter and friends play dolls etc., a huge willow tree they can climb and which has multiple ropes, tire swing and slide and an area where the soil is soft enough they can dig roads and holes. They do build forts of couch pillows, blankets and sheets but the best part of it is peeking out and showing me they are there. In non snowy weather we hike a lot and we make debris shelters and tipi frames of old branches but I make them with the kids. I tried digging a snow cave with them last year and they were not interested - I thought it more interesting than they did. They love collapsing things more than building them. Louise

[greenbeanbanshee]

I have been house sitting for my mom while she's "down under", so I thought I'd share this with you guys. My mom and her husband own a huge farm. They have thousands of acres and farm just about every kind of produce imaginable. Onions, corn, broccoli, strawberries, etc, etc, etc. Ok, so my kids are outside playing in the rare mid-February Oregon Valley sunshine. They could ride bikes, play in the grass, pick flowers/leaves, climb trees -- all of which I'm sure they did too....and who knows what else. But what did they spend all day long doing? They gathered up a bunch of debris from behind the onion packing barn and built themselves "a house". They moved in laundry baskets for tables and assured me that they were still working on it, even 8 hours later.

I stood on the back porch and looked far off into the horizon, under the huge maple trees...and there they were. Out in the field with the crazy shelter built up into a heap. They had rules and were talking about what they can and can't do out there/in there. Whatever. I just kept thinking of the forums and this thread. It's so funny. I'd like to know more about the life skills this is preparation for. As it seems to be very important work for my kids. Not just play, but meaningful work. It's very interesting to me.

Just thought I'd share that. Den building in the Oregon sunshine.....

~Bethany

[Rebecca]

I was just reading your post from February on this top, Bethany, and it struck me as interesting what you were observing. The children worked together to build their shelter, then established rules about what was okay and not okay. It absolutely is work for them and very important work, at that! Even the building aspects help them to learn about how things relate.

I was at a friend's house yesterday and we walked upstairs to their sitting area. There were cushions all thrown off the couch and grinning children popping up from time to time with muffled giggles coming from under the stacks of pillows and blankets. I thought it was wonderful that my friend was just letting them build and explore. I told her that it was becoming a lost art of sorts and that children needed to do this sort of thing in whatever form they could.

As my son gets older, we're starting to think about how he can use the forest we have in our backyard for such endeavors, supporting him as he grows. Safety is a concern- not because I worry about strangers, but because it is a forest with wild animals, rattlesnakes, etc. and my son is an urban boy who has had some, but not much, training and experience about to handle such things. In the societies long gone, this would be essential training from the time he was a toddler. But it is harder when the parents who would be doing this teaching don't really know what to do! We're working on educating him about these sorts of things so that he can function effectively in that environment and have the opportunity to truly explore.

Anyone have experiences with this sort of thing?

[kmjjer2911]

Rebecca,
Hi! Guess I am on a posting frenzy today.

Roman is 8 and we now let him play in the woods connected to our back yard. We do have a little safety net in that the entire wooded area of 1 acre or so was fenced in when we moved here, but the deer jump the fence and the snakes and tics love the woods!

Our son is learning what a poisonous snake looks like. Last year, our neighbor had to kill a poisonous copper head on our property (dad was at work). I let our son disect the poisonous snake, he took the fangs out and squeezed the venom out!

We do tic checks at night in the summer.

He can use real shovels, hammers, a pick axe, etc. DH taught him how to use all that carefully. And he knows not to run off with that stuff if totally dysregulated or at least we always know when he is dysregulated since he is only dysregulated when he is near us so he is usually safe when working in the woods alone. We check on him every once in a while, but more often than not, he call us to come check out his fort building with huge logs and sticks!

I would have you or your husband with your son as he works in the woods the first few times together, a fun training and working time together. I was able to purchase posters of poisonous snakes and plants, etc from our local newspaper.

Gotta go read to kids!

Yes - let them play in the woods - how awesome!!

We had a family campfire tonight on a school night in our backyard - how out of the ordinary?? We sang old campfire songs.

Guess what? I just heard our son say, "dad will you brush my teeth - I am too tired?" Sometimes he is so dysregulated at bedtime the teeth don't get brushed - this is a good night so I better go....

Kathy

[CookieCookie]

dens are great!! they're so cozy and comforting and a great environment for kids to hang out in and get some work done whatever the activity may be!

[heatherinsc]

Oh, gosh, I read this a week or so ago, and I keep thinking about it! I made lots of little dens when I was a kid, and my children have made some non-permanent ones in the house. My husband, father-in-law, and middle son made a largely-unused fort out back some years ago that the Littles (my 9yo and 5yo) have recently rediscovered and been decorating and making their own.

After reading the article though, I was thinking more about helping them make some sort of den in our woods. We are surrounded by woods on all sides, but alongside the back yard, we thinned out an area so that it is not quite so dense. We were taking a break from school the other day and I went out with them, casually mentioning the idea...We tried to make a sort of lean-to by propping deadfall along a tree that was bent over. It got too heavy and collapsed (before they got in it, fortunately!) I told them we would get Dad to help us make a better frame for a lean-to and we could work on it another day. They were satisfied with that, but still stayed out and played in the area.

It must have made an impression on them, because the next day they took their Dad out to show him. It's been too cold (for me) to go out, but hopefully it will warm up soon and they can work on it again and actually get to play in it... :)

Heather