My fae child has a diverse group of friends, and observing them in their natural habitat (my house) is rapidly becoming my favourite branch of amateur anthropology.
I am fortunate that I like all her friends and their parents. This means that, during play dates, we parents can sit in the kitchen with a cuppa, listening to the distant sounds of destruction echoing through various rooms of the house without feeling compelled to investigate. We only move if (a) the screams become blood-curdling or (b) it goes silent. Silence is the real threat. Small children only go silent when they’re either eating something they shouldn’t or plotting something they really shouldn’t.
It’s the children’s arrival behaviour, however, that provides the richest data set. I can spot the fae child from the non-fae within three seconds of the door opening. Their approaches to entering a home are so wildly different that I’m convinced anthropologists could write entire PhD theses on them.
Fae children, for instance, behave as though my hallway is a portal to their ancestral lands. Shoes are kicked off (sometimes into orbit), coats are dropped wherever gravity decides to take them, and without even a nod in my direction, they follow the faint psychic pull of my daughter into whatever room she has chosen to manifest in. There is no greeting. No small talk. No transition period. They simply arrive, select the nearest object of interest, and immediately begin generating chaos, noise, and snack-related demands. They do not ask permission. They do not even consider asking permission. They take over the house like a tiny, glitter-dusted insurgency.
Non-fae children, by contrast, follow the more traditional rituals of polite society. They remove their shoes carefully, pair them neatly (in someone else’s house!), and place their coats on hooks as though silently apologising for the inconvenience of existing. Then they stand in the doorway, overwhelmed by the concept of “play,” until prompted by a parent to go and join the fun.
At which point my daughter materialises like the Ghost of Christmas Future, beckoning them into whatever storyline she has prepared. And yes — despite their initial hesitation — noise, chaos, and general carnage follow soon after. Some behaviours are universal.
Regardless of origin, the results are the same: the house is inevitably trashed, the parents and I sit drinking tea and pretending we can’t hear anything, and we eventually end up being dragged to watch a “show” with no discernible plot. These shows usually involve wands, capes, items stolen from the dressing-up box, and at least one argument over who gets to be Elsa. At the moment, most plays centre around Elsa fighting a dinosaur, which I can only assume is a bold reinterpretation of pre-historic feminism.
What fascinates me most is the cleanup ritual.
Fae children — who previously behaved like cyclone incarnate — can somehow remember exactly where every toy originated and will return all several hundred Paw Patrol figures to their precise clan territories. Non-fae children tidy too, but in a more generalised, “objects go in boxes” manner. This is how Mighty Zuma ends up fraternising with Dino-Zuma, which is apparently a grave offence punishable by autistic shrieking.
But honestly, it doesn’t matter who comes over. I love the noise, the chaos, and the delighted shrieks of my fae child engaged in joyful mutual destruction with her friends. And even more than that, I love the post-play-date silence and the dramatic collapse afterward, when she is too tired to do anything but eat dinner and pass out like a small, exhausted woodland creature.
Anthropology has never been so loud.
Raising the Modern Fae 