Episode 20 Play and Traditions

In this week’s episode, hosts Philippa and Julie ponder the playful traditions that shape who we are—past and present. From cherished family games like cribbage and Rummy to the joyful, sometimes complex dance of blending new traditions in modern families, they explore how play weaves connection, identity, and belonging across generations.

Through personal stories, thoughtful metaphors, and reflections on adolescence, the episode unpacks how play is more than fun—it’s foundational. It can unite or exclude, heal or divide, depending on how we hold it. Whether you're nurturing your family’s rituals or starting new ones, this episode invites you to reflect on how traditions can be both a bridge and a legacy.

🔗 Tune in for insights on play, tradition, and the gentle power of connection. Subscribe now and start your listening tradition today!

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Transcript

Philippa: 0:00

Welcome to this week's episode of Pondering Play and Therapy with me, Philippa,

Julie: 0:07

and me Julie. This week's episode is on Play and Traditions, and we did toss a little bit over the title of this one, but Insane Traditions, what We're Thinking About. Is the concept of something playful being passed down the line within your family or within your friends, something that's passed down the line to you, a tradition, and also the things that you may create with your family, your friends, to your colleagues, and pass down the line to others. So in that sense, we are thinking about. Playful traditions over time, over weeks, over years, over generations. So that's what we're going to be particularly thinking about today. And so we'll think about first of all the playful things that have been passed on to each of us from the generations before us. But we'll also then spend time thinking about. How within a family, a group of friends, a newly created family, a workplace, we begin to create traditions that give that sense of safety and belonging in the groups that we are in. Whether those groups are permanent groups or temporary groups. So that's today's episode, thinking about play and traditions and this. A conversation that Philippa and I had oh, several weeks ago about Domino's and a cribbage box is, have I got that right? Philippa, tell us about those in your family.

Philippa: 1:56

Absolutely. So we were talking about play and. What we do in our families, weren't we? Which is that traditions, and I suppose I was talking about my grandparents and their generation. So my granddad. Where I always played cribbage with them. It's the only people I've ever played cribbage with. I don't know that I could play it now, but I just remember it was like 15 1, 15 2, 15 3. But my dad, when he was a child, had made my granddad and grand a cribbage board, which is just a wooden block with little holes in that you count when you say 15 1, 15 2. You move these. Count these sticks along in little holes along this board. And when my granddad passed, I had, that's what I had was this cribbage board. That my dad had made and the little counters, which are actually matchsticks and cocktail skewer things, that you put a cherry on and then put in a cocktail and those are the things that, that are in there. And my granddad's uncle, so my Uncle Norman, he used to live near to a school that I did. My YTS people won't know what A YTS is now, but it was a youth training scheme when I was 16. I used to live a few doors down from there and two days a week on my lunchtime, I used to go and play dominoes with him, have my lunch and play dominoes, and I. I had from his house, his domino box, and they are ivory dominoes, which I know is really awful. And you wouldn't want to have ivory, but they are treasured because they came from him. And the other thing that we. Played with my nana was, I think it's called, the actual name of it. It's called New Market. It's a card game, but we used to call it a penny and a penny out, and you have a saucer with a card underneath and it's a gambling game. But I remember that when we were kids on the only time I ever played it was on Boxing Day at my Auntie Flo's house. When. All the family went and sat in her front parlor, but it was just the front room of a Terry's house, but she used to call it the parlor. And there must have been, I don't know, it felt like hundreds of people when I was a child, but probably about 30 people of all generations. We were the youngest generation, but went right through three and four generations and we'd, they'd put all the coffee tables, all the tables together in this parlor and we'd all sit around it and there'd be a sorcerer in the middle with a card underneath. And there must have been loads of packs of cards. And then you just follow, so somebody put the ace of hearts down and then you put the two of hearts down and somebody put the three of hearts down and if you were out first, you got the money on the outside, which was the penny out, and if you'd played the jack of the card that was underneath the saucer, you got the penny in. So the penny out was always one, but sometimes the penny in wasn't one.'cause the jack wasn't played. So that could build up in pennies and you'd get quite a, as a kid you'd get like a pounds worth of pennies or something like that. And those I think are, from my grandparents. Those are really wonderful memories for me. They're, playing Penny and Penny out new market, whatever you want to call it. No, it really fills my body with joy and thinking about cribbage and dominoes with my Uncle Norman and my granddad. Those were times of really important connection and really great memories that I have of my family. And sometimes it was, when my granddad, he'd got Parkinson's and was. Was, quite poorly towards the end of his life, but he could still play cribbage or crib and we would still be able to do that, two or three times a week. Even when he was in hospital, we could still play cards and that was a really important. Way that I connected with him and heard his stories about life and things like that. So yeah, those are really precious memories and items for me. What about for you,

Julie: 6:38

Julie? Just thinking about, hearing you talk about that and listeners won't be able to see Philippa's face at the moment, but you absolutely beaming. While you tell those stories, it's like you've gone into a different place. You are reminiscing. But it's more than reminiscing. It's very present. The, these people have all died. They've all passed on. They're no longer physically in your life, but in your reciting the those memories. You've become very alive and it's almost as though they have also become very alive in the room. I've never met your Aunt Flory, but I have a picture now in my head of her front parlor with all these card tables and the saucers and so there's something about who you are that's being formed by these traditions. Even though those traditions are no longer happening with the people that they first happened with for you, and we don't know the stories of who they first played cribbage with and Penny in, penny out, where did that come from? It's that sort of play heritage that you and I know that we have, but we're very aware that many people don't have that. And so later on in this episode, that's why it's so important to. How each of us may create play traditions with the people in our lives, even if we haven't inherited something. So as you were talking, I was thinking, gosh, what do I have object wise? And I've recently been clearing out my parents' house along with several of my siblings, and that's brought a lot laughter. Oh my goodness. Why did we ever have that and what was that used for? Okay, we need to get rid of that. So there's been a lot of clearing out, and actually, I have to say, there are lots of packs of cards, but no other games that I've come across. Oh, there was the Scrabble board, so I'm hoping one of my nieces may take the Scrabble board. But I think for me, when I think about playfulness. As a tradition within my family, it would certainly be card games with one of my nanas. We lived in a different country to our grandparents, so I wouldn't see them very often, but the game of Rummy, which I'm sure many people know, is the only card game I know of by heart because I learned it very early on. And it's a game that's been passed on to nieces and nephews. We can all play rummy without having to think about the rules. And so I have saved several of the packs of cards. They don't particularly have a significance because I don't remember them as this was the pack of cards we always played with, but it is the fact that it's a couple of packs of cards from my parents' house that we are likely to have played rummy with. And they're not full size cards. My nana particularly liked playing with the smaller version of the cards. They're about, I don't know, an inch and a half by two and a half inches, but they're much smaller, partly because she also liked playing solitaire, playing games on her own, and they would fit on one of those little trays that you could have. On the wheels above your chair. So she would sit for hours playing solitaire, but with small packs of cards. So I, yeah, I'm thinking about card games. I'm thinking about. I never really got the hang of chess, didn't. So thinking about board games, which were often associated with a bit of stress for me as well.'cause actually I think I wasn't very good at them. I wasn't good at thinking ahead. And if I did play them, then I would often lose, and I would find that quite tricky. So when I think about playing board games as traditions in my family. I don't always see that as something that I found helpful or enjoyable as a child. That's come much more as an adult. I've found the games that I really enjoy and I found people to play them with. But as I've said before, in other episodes, I think singing was a thing that yeah, we've just begun to do as a family. My mom seemed to sing a lot. She would sing things like, their son has got his hat on to get us up in the morning. She would sing while she vacuumed the house. She would sing while she was wallpapering. She had a song for everything. And I think I've just picked that up and with some of my family. That's what we still like to do, is just have a sing along. Just somebody sit around the piano, somebody start a daft song. So yeah, the things that we've inherited, and both of us happened to have been in families where we have inherited some playful ways. But one of the things we wanted to think about today then is what can be created. Playfully within families, groups of friends, groups of colleagues. That then becomes the tradition. It becomes the thing that we do when we are together. And just before we came on, you talked about. The Tango and the foxtrot. Tell us about the tango and the foxtrot, because I found this really helpful and I've scribbled it down because I wanna remember it.

Philippa: 12:41

I suppose it is thinking about why are those traditions important? Why do we need them? And I. I suppose it's, it is to belong. It's to connect. It's to be part of something bigger than us that says, this is our clan, this is our family, this is our people, this is our tribe. What, however you want to say, but this is where I belong and I am part of. This belonging group and we have these traditions and these feel safe and secure for me and it, you know those people at my Aunt Flurries who I didn't see. From one year to the next, we could sit down and play Penny and Penny out. And everybody knew like your game of rummy. Everybody knew what to do, where they were gonna sit, what was gonna happen whether you were four years old or 84 years old. There was a connection that engulfed as all through that tradition of playing Penny and Penny out. So when we blend families, whether that's a foster family, whether that's families coming together where, they've got step families, I suppose is what they're called, aren't they? Where we maybe haven't always grown up from a tiny baby and just inbuilt those traditions in inside us. We come with different. Experiences different. Traditions, different things that have happened to us. And when I worked with foster families, I used to ha think with them about, actually your family does the tango. And you do the tango really great and you all know the steps. And now you've got this child, this teenager coming in or several coming into your family, but they dance. The fox trot. And that's a very different dance. And how do you get together? So you can teach them the tango, and that's okay. You can teach them the tango and help them to learn the steps, but it's not ingrained inside them. They are coming from the outside in. And that's okay. That's it. All right. And you can learn the foxtrot, but again, you're coming from the outside in. But maybe. If you can combine the two or add a bit of the foxtrot into the tango or a bit of the tango into the foxtrot where you can create something together, then I think that's much more powerful because that's something that you create as this new group of people, a family a cohort, whatever it is. You you are doing, you are now developing your own. Tradition, your own kind of sense of belonging from your original tradition. So it's not about saying these aren't important, I guess it's like when you have an adult relationship, whether you get married, whether you live with somebody, whether you've got a group of friends, you all come. With experiences and you hopefully blend your dance. You blend your foxtrot and your tango to create something that is meaningful, that you all know the steps of together. Yeah.

16:18

So a sense that rather than a child, say a child, for instance, coming into a foster family, into an adoptive family. Feeling that perhaps they will never belong because they don't know the traditions of this family. They haven't been in this family since they were born. They haven't grown into those family traditions, which could create a sense of exclusion and a sense of I never quite fit and never quite belong. And as you say, there is opportunity to. And for the parents to learn that foxtrot, but ultimately the strength in that family or that group, new group of friends is to create something that is new and unique and about the now and who we are now, and creating those playful traditions with the people who have come together perhaps later in life. And haven't come from the same traditions. How important it is yes. To teach one another our own traditions, but to be very consciously creating new plague traditions within that new group. And I'm thinking here about, friendships. I've just come back from a little bit of a road trip with a very good friend who has a camper van. I've known this friend for a good 30 years or so, and we had a road trip to Ireland. We both have heritage in Ireland and we were visiting cousins, uncles, neighbors, people that, have been part of our lives for a long time. But what we have, just the two of us. Our own road trip traditions. So this friend, camp Van two dogs me up the front is not great on windy roads and she's also not great going downhill. So we often have a bit of a tail behind us and it's become a game over the 30 years or so is saying, probably time to pull into a layby or pull into a side road and let the queue go past. And then we guess how many cars there are gonna be in the queue. And then the winner is the person who's guested close to the 5, 10, 15. I think our record is 30 odd going past, and it's just a thing we do. The other game we play is tapping out a tune on the dashboard. Just tap tap, tap a tune. The other person has to guess what it is. We've just created these ways of being on low long road trips together, and we don't have to say, oh, when we go on that road trip, we are going to play this. We just know at some point, one of us is gonna say, what's this? Tune then, and we'll start tapping. And that's not, neither of those games are things that have come from my family or from other people, but they're unique to that relationship. I don't play them in other people's cars. I don't play them on other long journeys. I only play them with that friend and it is something very warm and connecting for me and her. And until we're old ladies, we'll probably be.

Philippa: 19:54

And I think that, when you create new families and when you have your own children, you have some of the traditions that come down from your, your parents, your grandparents, but you also create new ones. Don't you? I think lot, lots of families do. In hours. It's just something simple like a calling the Caterpillar cake. Everybody has that on their birthday and whoever's birthday is, gets the choice of whether they want the face at the front. And, my nieces, when they were little, my sister-in-law had these beautiful cakes made. They were absolutely beautiful. All of, whatever theme they were into when they were toddlers and when my oldest niece got to, I dunno, about six, she was like, why am I having that cake? I want the calling, the Caterpillar cake. You might need to explain

20:52

a column so cakes are available.

Philippa: 20:56

Yeah, they're, I think Aldi and everyone do their own versions now it's just a very simple Swiss roll covered in chocolate with a white chocolate caterpillar face on the front and white chocolate feet. It is very simple. It's about nine quid. Compared to these really elaborate beautiful cakes that my niece was having that were like 60, 70, 80 quids worth, because they were well worth it. They were amazing. But actually what she'd seen was that everybody else in the family has a call calling the Caterpillar cake. Because that's what my child wanted when they were babies and toddlers. Yeah. So it was like I would, so now even they have Colin, the category and my sister-in-law was like that's fine. It's gonna save me like 60 quid. I don't need to be doing that anymore. But that is a tradition that now everybody. And even if you didn't have it you felt like you missed out. So and so that, that is something that is, is passed on. I remember then my son getting to about, I don't know, 13 and saying, I don't even like chocolate. It was just at that age, they're hitting those teenagers and all that brain, and they're trying to find their clan outside of their family. They're trying to find their people, and so they, they were like, I don't like chocolate. Why? Why are you buying me this? I want a sponge cake. I want this. There was a rejection of this tradition as we hit these teenage years. So everybody else is having a calling the Caterpillar cake, and my child is having a Victoria Bond or whatever it was. They decided that they wanted through these first few years of the teen teenage years, we're now back to calling the Caterpillar cake. But there was a rejection off. I don't want that. And I think that when we've got these traditions, whether it's in families, blended families, foster families. It gives a sense of predictability, it gives a sense of security, it gives a sense of, this is what my family is about and I belong within this. But it also allows for a rejection of something in a safe way, so we can go and explore something different in those. Times of teenage early twenties where we do, we should be trying to find traditions, we should be trying to find our people. That is what we are designed to do at those points of time, I suppose what we did in our family and is we kept the tradition going. For my child, we respected their wish of, we don't want a color calling the caterpillar cake. We. We want a, a sponge cake.'cause I don't like chocolate. Which really wasn't true, but, that was just the point of where we were at that point. But we are, there was an allowance for them to reject the tradition. But the tradition still held, but there was a respecting of their wishes, their viewpoints at that time their thoughts of, I need to go and find something for myself. And hopefully we come back to those things, don't we? Or we don't. We find something different and we find a new tradition as it goes. My. Person came back to it and that, that was great, but it was okay if they hadn't have done, if they'd always stuck with what I want as a victorious and we draw a, any elaborate cake or whatever it is. Yeah,

24:45

so that as you're speaking, that's reminding me of that what's sometimes called the circle of security or the attachment circle, which we think about very much with toddlers. That sense of I have my secure base, I have the people I know and understand the people I feel secure with, safe with. And because I've got that, I can go off out into the world, which for a 2-year-old is get off dad's knee and go to the other side of the room and go and play with potentially a new person at the playgroup. That's the element of exploration for a 2-year-old. But I can get off my parents' secure knee. I can go off and explore and meet new things, meet new people, meet new experiences, but always knowing that I can come back to the familiar and the secure and that same pattern seems to happen again in adolescence. That sense of, I have my secure base, but I can go off and explore. And with it comes, rejection comes a sense of disdain for the secure base. And it, I, but ultimately it's still there and the, that exploration is much, much wider. It's way beyond the house, it's way beyond school. It's out into very unfamiliar settings that the parents, the carers, won't know all the details about. But the child, the young person, the adolescent knows that safety is ultimately still there.

Philippa: 26:27

Absolutely. Dan, sorry, Julie, I interrupted. Yeah, no go for it. I was gonna say, Dan Siegel talks about this put a link in into a YouTube video that's free and available, and he talks about. This need for the adolescents to go and explore, to go and find their own people, because we are eventually not gonna be available for them, do they? And if they're on their own, then actually that survival is dependent on having your clan, your pH, your. Your people around you. So actually in adolescence it is about moving away from us as their parents, their older adults, the ones that have kept them safe up until this point to finding these new group of peers or people that are gonna take them into their future and. For them. They then need to develop their own traditions with those what they do there outside of their family, don't they? But their family still, like you said, needs to be that secure base whilst they do that and there needs to be this. Extending of the attachment connection. It needs to be pulled really far so that you are still there. You are still that person that says, it's okay. You are safe. If anything happens, I've got your back. But yeah, you can go out and explore and find. Other ways of having birthdays, other ways of being on a Sunday morning or, whatever it is that they're doing that, that there's a difference for them. And with that, I guess comes lots of risk and some of that risk is really important to take. And some of it for some people will be a little bit. Too much for others they'll weigh up quite right, just right in this. But that is part of being and finding your new clan and your new traditions while still having an anchor in, in, in where we are now. So that allows us to then become the adults we are and cherish the traditions of our family, but we've still got new traditions with our new family and with our new friends. And it's all interconnected, isn't it, in many ways.

29:06

Yeah. And that sense of being able to contribute, so I might have as, as you and I have done, we've both grown up in our families of origin with the people who gave birth to us. We grew up in our birth families, and to what extent were we able to contribute to traditions when we were growing up. Probably not. I'm thinking probably not very much. I went along with what was offered and what was already established in the family, but that capacity as we get older, as we move through adolescence, as we go out into the world, beyond our families, or if we are moving into a family that isn't our birth family and creating a new family through design. Then there's the opportunity to feel that we belong through contributing to develop a new tradition, a new way of playing, a new way of being together, and the strength that can come from having your idea taken up and used and wanting to other people wanting to repeat your idea. So that sense of when you meet somebody again, or if you are in the same family, meet, the next time that event comes up and somebody's saying, oh, Julie, remember that thing we did last year, that was really great. Should we do that again? That huge sense of belonging and being able to contribute to being valued. That what I offered last year is remembered. And is remembered with a smile and with a sense of connection and the desire to repeat it. So I, in thinking about, I, I became an aunt quite young. I was still at school when I became an auntie and developing traditions with my nieces and nephews, and some of them I've seen very often. Some of them I don't see so often. But some of the things that I introduced, like just, the child lying on their front or curled up in a little ball and me it's making me smile. Even thinking about it. I pretend that their back is a piece of paper oh, I have to rub out the piece of paper. So I give them a good old massage. And then the bit they all squirm at, but love is I tickle them under theirs with my finger, theirs, your armpits. I'm sharpening my pencil. And then I'd ask them, do you want a letter or a number? And then if it's a letter, how many letters And that when they were 2, 3, 4, it really was, I think it was just shapes when they were very little, but at the time they were six or seven, a three letter word. And then I'd create that. Three letter word on their back and I was always completely amazed that they knew what it was. They couldn't see what I was doing, but they could feel it. Or they wanted a five digit number by the time they're 11 five digit number, and then I'd have to remember what it was. I'd drawn on their back. Now most of those young people are grownups now. But even now, one or two of them will just, if it's on the sofa, just curl up and I'll say, Ooh, I rub out the paper, and there's just this sort of lovely smile that goes on. So that's a tradition that we've created just between me and my nieces and nephews. It's not something that came from the wider family, but the joy that gives me to be able to contribute something. And to have it invited again and again is just lovely. And that becomes then an understanding, a connection with that person and me. That isn't something that anybody else in my family does with them as far as I know. So that sort of forever hopefulness of being able to create tradition, give it a go. Try out something and some of it will fall absolutely flat. The child, the young person will just walk away and go, oh, don't do that. That's horrible. You think, oh okay, I got that wrong. But every now and again, just finding something that has potential to become a tradition in that group, I don't think it can be planned. I don't think it can be measured. I haven't got much of this out of a book. I've just it's just emerged probably somebody has written these some things down in a book, I don't know. But just giving it a go and seeing what happens and just keeping your ear to the ground is, oh, I wonder if this might become a little bit of a tradition in our group. Yeah. I dunno if that rings any bells with

Philippa: 34:17

you. Absolutely. I but what it made me start to think about was that. Traditions can build connection. That can bring people in. It can help us to feel part of a group, but they, it can also be rejecting. It can also help you feel on the outside of a group. It can also make you feel like you don't belong in somewhere because you don't know the traditions, you don't know what they're doing that, and nobody wants to. Include you in them and that can be quite harmful and hurtful. I think about school and groups and even mothers and toddlers groups and groups that you, training groups where you attend and people already all know one another and they know what's going on and they know. What's gonna be done and how it's going to be done. And you don't, and nobody tells you, oh, actually what we do now is this, or this is what happens, or this is how we interact, or this is this song, or this is, and you are just watching. And that can really make you feel like an outsider. Or when you approach people, stop talking or stop. Doing what they're doing, and you can literally see that they're not including you in something. And that in itself can be really hurtful and harmful. And maybe if as an adult for me, I would just think, oh whatever it is. I always really try not to swear there, Julie and walk away. I appreciate that and walk away, but as a teenager you don't. I think that, and as a young adult, I think those can be really hot for me. I was very sporty at school, so I. Was always in a group because I did sports and that just led me to being in a, in an inclusive group. And, I was pretty good at swimming, I was pretty good at rounders and netball and those sorts of things. So I was part of a group that really I didn't need to, kind of find a way into, I just, it just happened because I was good at what I did and so therefore I was included. I moved schools when I was, 14 and so for the last two years, and it was a school that didn't do sports and I really struggled because I didn't know another way of being, I could connect with people. I could, I knew the traditions of a swimming team or a. Of a netball team and knew what you did, and to be part of that group was really part of my identity. I was good at those things, and I did academia because that gave me access to sport. Because I, you had to attend class and achieve in order to be able to do the sports, because obviously you had to leave lessons. When I went to this new school, there was no sports, there was no group I was involved in. There was these cool kids who really. Weren't very pleasant. And that's because they'd got their own groups that kept you together. So eventually I just didn't go to school. I just didn't go to school.'cause I just didn't know, I didn't fit anywhere. I didn't have any connection with anybody yet all the people that I had connection with had gone because I'd moved to the other side of the city and yeah, I just didn't go to school.'cause I didn't have anything to connect with. I didn't have, I was on the outside of all these groups. Yeah.

38:17

So the importance of, we've talked about this before about the word play in English, the way we use it in our language. We play sport, we play music, but it's more than the rules. It's about being with other people. It involves at least one other person. It involves a connection. It involves keeping to the rules that have been established for that particular game, but also being creative within that and having a sense of belonging, but also being myself. Within that and you really lost that at that age.

Philippa: 38:58

Yeah, and I think, I was 14, but that sense of identity, I knew I was good at it. I wasn't the best. There was people that were much better at all the sports than me, but I was good enough to make the teams and that gave me. Some privilege within the school. I could miss some lessons to go and practice. I got to, we were lucky enough in the, that school that there was a swimming pool on site. So at lunchtime I could go and swim at lunchtime. So anything that was. Maybe a little bit more tricky that if there was gonna be clashes at school or bullying or I could opt out. I had got a way of getting out of that. I could go and swim in, in the swimming pool. I could go and have hockey practice. I had, that's what I did after school. My whole identity. Was around sport and that's where I belonged. And I knew what I was doing. I knew that, this was our. This was how you got ready. This was how you got on the coach. This was how you shouted and supported people. I, Mr. Ku, I still remember him. He was in my middle school, actually not my high school. I was a swimmer there and he was just the most amazing teacher. And he used to call me renter gob because I used to shout so loud. But I knew that was my job in that fam in that. You said family? Yeah. And there was a family. Yeah, it was, yeah. And then I went to another school and I just ha it was all gone. There was no Mr. Koch, there was no swimming team. There was no, there was nothing that I belonged in. I didn't have these connections or anything like that. It was just horrendous. And my will fell apart for quite a long time.

40:56

Because you didn't have that place where you felt you belonged, you were playing sport, but again, you knew the rituals and the traditions of how those teams and those groups worked at your school and in your county and all the meets that you. I'm thinking I had that, not so much with sports, but with music. I knew what to do in an orchestra. I knew what to do in a choir. I knew how to, as you said, get on the coach, go to a festival, go and play in a concert, and knew the rituals of what to wear. And we were playing, we call it playing. I did drama as well at school, and I loved that. I loved being able to. To act, to play another character. And interestingly, Philippa, you and I haven't shared this before. I also swapped schools at 14. But the opposite way to you, I swapped at my school I was at, couldn't offer music and couldn't offer drama. So I swapped schools at 14 in order to be at a school that offered music and offered drama. Offered the two things. Play that I already knew I wanted to do. So for me, at that age, that was a wonderful shift because suddenly I was in a school that allowed us time off to go and practice for the school concert, go for a festival, go to the theater and that concept of playing with others was huge. It allowed me to make friends very quickly within a few weeks. I had found a group of friends because they're the ones who played music. They were the ones who wanted to sing. They were the ones who wanted to act, and I had no problems, if that's the not the right word, but, I didn't have a difficulty finding friends when I was 15, 16, 17, because I'd found a common thing.

Philippa: 42:58

Yeah, play with

42:58

others through music. So it's interesting play. These are two new episodes. I know we're coming to the end for today probably, but two other episodes might be about play and sport and play and music and where those topics might take us for another day.

Philippa: 43:17

Yeah. I just want you to just link those really and think about. Children that are moved, we talked about moving school. So for me it was a disaster really. It was just, I don't regret it. I absolutely, I did have friends outside of school and, I had a really nice life. Really. I just didn't go to school. And it. Took me a long way round to reach academia and, but that gave me a lot of life experience, a lot. So it was the right thing for me at that time. But at that time it was quite tricky. I guess for you it was the opposite way is that you found your people and I suppose what I, what it was making me think about was children. Who move homes, whether that's into foster families, whether that's into adoption, whether that's into residential services, whether that's because parents separate and then they maybe have new new stepparents or siblings become blended families. And I wonder if sometimes. Their experiences like yours, Julie, where it feels like they fit and the play and the connection is really for them and it feels like these are my people and this is where I belong. But I also wonder on the opposite of that, about the impact of leaving something that is so familiar, whether that, it might be that. It's chaos and violence and, but it's still familiar. Those are still the traditions that you have in your family. Yeah. And you may be moving to a family where all your needs are met and you go to school on time and you've got nice clothes and you've got board games and all the things that, that it. Adults, we perceive children to be needing, but as a child. What's that like? You know where, how you belong in one family. These adults are saying, this is not an okay family to you, but those are all your traditions. Those are all your, that, you know the play might not be the kind of play that as adults we think children should be engaging in, but it's the only play that they've known. It's the only way of being that they know how to be. And now we put them in the family that we say, this is gonna be much better for you. This is what life should look like. But actually. You just don't know what to do.'cause my when I moved schools, my parents moved me schools because they thought the school I was going to was academically much better, was gonna help me. And they were right. Academically it was more academically driven and the attainment of that school was greater. But for me it was absolutely the worst thing because my links were with the sport and the family there that this school didn't offer somebody else as an adult, made those decisions for me. For the right reasons, in the right context, but without really. Knowing what it was gonna feel like. And I think that we often, that often happens with children who, are moved out of their family of origin or maybe, like I say, within blended families or have to go and live with grandparents or, extended families is. It's probably for the very right reasons and done in a very caring way. But what does that feel like for that child?

47:04

Yeah the loss of familiarity, the loss of sense of belonging, the loss of playfulness in ways that, you know, within the chaos or within the neglect or within the things that were not going well for that child. There would've been some good enough. Even if that hasn't been from the parents, that could have been with a neighbor, it could have been with a grandparent, an auntie, a cousin. There will be playful traditions that will have already built up in 2, 3, 4 years for that child, and then that suddenly all is taken away.

Philippa: 47:45

And even the good enough is not taken away because if you don't know anything else, and that's all you know, then you know, you develop in that way that you have those things that this becomes your normal, your every day, your, this is what your life is like and you feel safe and con connected in that in a way, even when you are unsafe. And it can feel unsafe being safe. And I think that's probably a whole, we have talked about playing play. We have talked, we have a,

48:18

one of the earlier episodes is about play and safety and feeling unsafe while playing. Listeners can go back and look at one of those earlier episodes. But that's probably a place to pause for today. Thinking about play and traditions. Traditions over time. And another episode, we'll think more about the small rituals that might happen within a day, within a week within everyday life. The way playfulness might come into daily rituals. So we know traditions and rituals are very similar words and may have similar meanings. For listeners, but today we've talked particularly about traditions over time and another time we'll get to play those smaller rituals. But for today, we are going to pause.

Philippa: 49:13

Thank you for listening to this week's episode. If you've enjoyed it, then please hit subscribe and we'll hopefully see you in the next podcast.