Bad Guy Games (first published 04/2021)

The summer I started teaching full time at Cottage, I had the privilege of learning from the legendary Cottage guru, Teacher Ana Chaidez.  We were working together in the Big Yard, and there were a couple of kids in our class that session doing all this stuff like throwing scissors/hitting/pushing/hurling everything over the fence. I was scared about all those behaviors! I was very afraid someone would get hurt, and really did not understand what I was seeing. 

Did you think they teach this at teacher school? They do not. That’s why you have teachers all over the place at most schools, scared of behaviors and trying to solve for them using rewards and punishments, like so many of us were taught at home by our families. That’s the main foundation of how most teachers know what to do about challenging behavior, and that’s frightening. Research backs up Cottage’s assertion that relationship-based strategies are not only better experiences for the individuals involved, but they are also way more effective in the long run. But back then, I was a well-educated but inexperienced Cottage parent who had just gotten my first teaching job, and there was absolutely zero understanding about brain development, sensory systems, neurodivergence, or why the Cottage magic works in the popular discourse. It’s still, today, a small, select few educators, researchers, specialists and parents who are beginning to understand the interconnectedness of all of these and how we can meet the challenges a teacher or parent faces effectively. Even now, today, there is a bill under consideration to ban the use of seclusion and prone restraint positions in schools, on children, and no guarantee that it will pass. Culturally, this is still where we are. We treat children like they are subhuman. 

But back to the kids: Why would a child do those things? What would have a child do something they absolutely knew was dangerous to other people’s bodies, and would definitely result in adults being all over them, stopping them from doing anything else? For (maybe it was days but it certainly felt like) weeks, I was struggling to understand the “why”. And one day, Ana said to me, “Oooh yeah, they are playing ‘bad guy games’”.  She explained that when kids catch it from adults a lot, for doing things we don’t like (for all kinds of reasons), they start to feel like they are bad, and they process it by playing “bad guy games”— being a bad guy, being a cop, being a toothy monster, trying on the persona in all kinds of ways including doing whatever it is they think of as “bad”. That was a very helpful frame for me. I thought back to what I had read in school, about how play is how children process and make sense of information. I thought back to Erik H. Erikson, the developmental psychologist whose summary of the Eight Stages of Man was a lightpost, calling out the early childhood internal crisis he calls “Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt”, where he says, “...there is a limit to a child’s and an adult’s endurance in the face of demands to consider himself, his body, and and his wishes as evil and dirty, and to his belief in the infallibility of those who pass judgement”. That feeling of shame often ends up looking like anger. Some people who aren’t me might label it as “aggression” (not me, though, because I find that frame directs me to respond with fear, or avoidance, rather than closeness and empathy, which is what actually helps). 

When a kid is playing “bad guy games”, the response I want to have is to come quietly to the child, with my body low so that my eyes are ideally lower than theirs, and use a quiet, calm voice (especially if this is in front of others, so the child can save face), and let them know that I can’t let them do that thing, that I know who they really are (not a bad guy but the child I love) and that they don’t mean to hurt anyone, but this thing they are doing might hurt, so I am going to keep everyone safe. I’m going to set and hold limits, especially around physical and emotional safety, and that is done by my developing a strong, caring relationship with the child I want to help, and staying right there to make sure I back up what I am saying about keeping everyone safe. 

It might seem counterintuitive at first to think of setting firm limits as a solution to what I would regard as a “bottom-up” behavior, as Mona Delahooke calls it. In other words, the child can’t help what they are doing. It’s not intentional in the sense of a well thought out plan. It’s an action borne of hurt, fear, and that part inside all of us that’s like a caged animal backed into a corner. What firm limits held by a trusted caregiver do, though, is create a sense of safety, a sense that the child cannot throw this scene into chaos, because their grownup has got this. So, I want to set a limit that might look like, I hug them on my lap for a while until they calm down. Or I stay right beside them and make sure that they are able to move into the next thing they want to do without losing their cool. And I do this over and over, trying to become a person the child knows they can come to if they are starting to feel ill at ease, before anything happens. I keep my cool, so I can share it with the kids. And then I’m there, quiet, low down, but a support if they need me. 

I have been utilizing this practice for a number of years now, with my own kids and kids at school. And then recently, I was thinking about a girl I’ve worked with who has done some things she believes are mischievous at school, and also called other children names. The mischievous things, kids often do at school, because Cottage is a place where kids sometimes have to look pretty hard to see the boundaries; they have a lot of freedom of choice. Are we allowed to take our shoes off here? Yes? How about underwear? Are we allowed to paint the bikes? Yes? How about the snack table? And so on. I like that they feel safe to try things that are not allowed in most settings. But the name calling, we don’t hear a lot because I won’t stand for folks saying things with the intention of hurting someone’s feelings. 

One day, I heard her naming everyone in the class, loudly, starting with the teachers, and calling everyone a name. The other kids were like “whatever dude”, because it wasn’t really a very offensive word, but of course, I can’t have that. So I went up to her quietly and said, “you know, I can’t let you say that, because we have a rule here that we can’t say things to hurt other people’s feelings. I personally know that you’re kidding and you don’t mean it, but some of the other kids might not know, and it might actually hurt their feelings, so I can’t let you say that”, and she just instantly understood and became quiet and went about her work.

And I was thinking about her this week, and it just occurred to me that she had been catching it here and there for being something like “not nice” or “unkind”. It’s not that anyone has said those words to her, as far as I can tell. But all people do things that are unthoughtful sometimes, of course, especially little kids, who are used to being the center of the universe and are struggling to adjust. Kids do things that are meant to communicate messages like, “I NEED YOUR ATTENTION RIGHT NOW!, and it comes out like, painting the walls. Pushing over your baby sibling. Maybe saying a word that really gets the adults’ attention. But for people who are raised as girls, the worst thing we could possibly be is “not nice”. It’s an incredibly loud message directed at us, everywhere. So, her playing out “not nice” looks like...calling people names. Doing mischief. Talking rudely to people. Excluding people. All of it.  

I feel like I finally got it. In my understanding of what “bad guy games” look like, I was centering boys, because of course. I’m going back to my undergrad school and turning in my Women’s Studies/Gender Studies degree, because I cannot believe I was so complicit in erasing the way that “Bad Guy” persona shows up for girls. And now I am grieving for the classes full of girls I have served who lacked the benefit of my understanding the pain they were in. From now on, when I see exclusion, name calling, and maybe even mischief, when I stop and think, what is happening for this child? If it seems to be that they are playing “bad guy games”, I know what to do. I will quiet my voice. Come close, get low. I will let them know that I am going to keep everybody safe. That I know who they really are and that they don’t mean to hurt anyone, and that’s why I am going to stay here and make sure everybody is safe.

Imagine if an adult had done that for you, when the other kids had felt scary. When I imagine that, I’m already in High School, tall as I am now, with kids saying terrible things to me and hurting my body. What if a grownup had just been there, keeping everyone safe? Not like a bubble, but just setting the standard for how we treat one another? What if someone had talked to us like we would be adults someday, setting that standard for our own communities?

I had already started writing this when a kid came up to me at school. He said something so profound, that it feels as if maybe the world will be different by the time he is grown up and setting standards of his own. He had come in to school, introducing himself as the character he’s been being lately, who is a superhero who is undefeatable and can change into any animal. The kids played a game where he was chasing them, as that character. Then, abruptly, he changed clothes, came up to me and said, “I don’t like being (that character)”. There was a pause. And I looked at him, and I said, “I saw the kids were running from you when you were being that guy.” He responded, “I don’t like being that character because of me. It feels bad inside when I do it.” I’m floored. He goes on, “I only do it because I’m scared.  It makes me feel strong”. And then he walked away.