My two-and-a-half-year-old son has a set of five toy dinosaurs. They are his favourite toys. He’s named them after the main characters in a book series he loves — Roar (Tyrannosaurus Rex), Munch (Diplodocus), Stomp (Triceratops), Bash (Stegosaurus) and Boo (Deinonychus).
Every morning he wakes up and the dinosaurs are gone from where he left them the previous day. And so the search begins. One day they might be found sitting in the bathtub, another day they’re reading a book, another morning they’re staring at footprints on an Etch-a-sketch, or perched on top of the highest shelves in the house.
‘How did they get there?’ we ask when we finally locate them.
My son, for his part, never needs an explanation. ‘Cheeky dinosaurs’, he’ll say, before running off to play again.
Magic, we’ve discovered in our first years of parenting, is an important part of raising children. It’s a lesson we’ve learned, at least in part, thanks to Bluey on the ABC.
For those of you who haven’t yet encountered this little blue dog and her family, Bluey is the star of one of the ABC’s most popular Australian kids series. The show centres around a family of four anthropomorphic blue heelers. The episodes are short — just seven minutes long — and each follows an adventure in the lives of Mum, Dad, Bluey and her sister, Bingo.
'We don’t need to travel to discover a new world and new way of living — all we need is a xylophone, a stick of asparagus or a feather. Indeed, in a time when we’re cut off from our places of worship, it reminds us that the family home can be a sacred and mystical space, too.'
A large part of what makes the show special is its focus on imagination and play. Most of the adventures are set around the family home (a particularly relevant aspect of the show in a time of COVID-19), and involve parents and children playing a game together.
In one episode, a magic xylophone causes people to freeze where they’re standing when they hear it. In another one, an asparagus causes people to become whatever animal the person wielding the asparagus calls them. In another one, a feather wand causes any object it touches to become incredibly heavy. Chaos inevitably ensures — often along with some embarrassment.
Is this magic at work, or just a family using their imagination together? It doesn’t actually matter