Sally Gillespie

Sally Gillespie

Did you have a childhood haunt? A place to play, imagine, dream and adventure in on your own terms as a child. Looking back I realise I had a number of them. The dappled shade in our garden between the fig tree and the grapefruit tree beside the goldfish pond was a refuge for reverie, while the densely planted margins of the long drive up to our neighbours house was a great place for imaginary play with friends. Then there was the gate at the end of our suburban road which took us onto the slopes of an extinct volcano – an excellent place for adventure with its scoria craters and ridges from old Maori fortifications. I may have lived in inner city Auckland but in my childhood haunts my friends and I felt wilderness around us and wildness within us. .

This is the magic of outdoor places for children. It may not look like much to adult eyes – a few trees,  a patch of scrub – but for children it’s a beloved place where  they can stretch their imagination and soul as much as their legs. Childhood haunts offer a landscape of immense possibility, and a refuge from the adult constructed and ruled world. One of my husband’s fondest childhood memories is of a woodland close to his home in England, a place he described to me as a wild forest where he and his mates could play out elaborate games over days. When he took me back to visit his home town, some forty years after he emigrated to Australia as a child, we went in search of his beloved woodland. To his shock, what we found was a small patch of trees and scrub sitting between two roads. The vast wilderness he experienced had been produced by the wild imagination of shared children’s play.

Children are small lively creatures who delight in snaking along on the ground, under bushes, or clambering up accessible trees. They don’t look for grandeur or magnificence but the kind of intimacy provided by small nooks and crannies and makeshift shelters. Childhood haunts provide mini-worlds where children can immerse themselves in their senses – smells, sounds and touch as well as the sights of their own private world. Within the shelter of these places children can fall into feelings of timelessness, making up absorbing stories which develop their imaginative and creative faculties while engaging their senses.

So where is your child’s place of outdoor magic and play? Maybe it’s a tree that can be climbed, a screened rockery, or an unkempt side passage. These are places to be treasured, not pruned back or tidied up. What might look like an unappealing mess to you, could be the call of the wild for your child. Once you see the places your child is drawn to, let her or him go there often. What creates the magic of a childhood haunt is frequency and familiarity. In daily life this will most likely be in a garden or a local park, but in holiday time it can be through the return visits to the same beach, farm or camping spot.

The final ingredient in the recipe for a happy childhood haunt is the precious gift of free time and unsupervised activities. This is when the imagination fires up and the creative mind conjures up spontaneous games. This kind of freedom to play and explore in the natural world as well as negotiate friendships without adult intervention is crucial for building children’s well being and resilience. Through this, children can learn to interact with our world and others finding their own capacity for meaning making and relationship building. Then the childhood haunt can magically turn play and exploration into an adventurous and confident soul for life.