We Need to talk about Musical Chairs
…Musical Chairs might be what’s really wrong with the world.
I’m going to describe a game to you, and you have to decide if you want to play it.
Here goes :
- You want to play it – there’s a prize
- What’s the prize – who cares. There’s only one and the winner gets to have it to themselves for the rest of their lives.
- Besides, you’re playing with friends. You’re surrounded by friends.
- It’s just chairs – you know chairs. Chairs are great – it’s a sitting game and sitting is easy.
- Take a seat – any seat – there’s plenty and there are so many to choose from.
- Oh, and there’s music – you like music.
- When you hear the music walk in a circle.
- Don’t you break the speed or pace of the walking circle.
- When the music stops, all you’re gonna need to do is sit back down. See? Easy.
- Aaaaand, we’re going to take away a chair now.
- Don’t worry about the missing chair, keep walking and never break the movement of the circle.
- I repeat – remain super chill…Mr. or Ms. Cucumber Cool.
- But, there’s a prize – don’t think about the prize
- If you slow down walking by the chairs or try and get your competitors (I mean friends) to move faster, you’re a dirty-musical-chair-cheater.
- Ooops, the music ended. Grab a set wherever you are.
- If you don’t have a seat directly at your butt, you loose. You don’t win and you’ll never get a prize.
- Stay chill about this…walk away like you don’t have a care in the world…don’t have a care in the world.
- Now everyone else gets to do it all again and again and again and again.
- Unless you’re a loser. If you’re a loser, you must stand (all the seats are part of the game – seats are for winners and you lost) Now, watch all your friends make infinite circles to music – that you now hate – as one by one, they all join you in standing and watching…your legs ache, boredom sets in, the prize will never be yours.
- In the last round – when two players remain and there’s only a single chair – knives out.
Do you want to play this game?
Would you ever want to play this game?
It sounds horrible. A competitive game that doesn’t want players to actually compete…
As a kid, I was always kinda annoyed by musical chairs. So, I’m infinitely grateful that I had a kid of my own and got the opportunity to really understand my feelings. And, I think I was being nice as a kid by saying ‘I didn’t like musical chairs’ because…it’s actually the worst.
Here is a game that is set up as a competition but involves no strategy. It’s just one continual circular walk, no matter the pace of the music or your desire to win – one long slog.
Again, I’m giving this game too much credit. It actually goes beyond no-strategy. Musical Chairs is fully anti-strategy. At all times, the right way to play is to just surrender to the inevitable. To play nice by letting the mob movement mentality dictate if you are destined to be a winner or looser. Musical Chairs says, “surrender to the fate of the group”.
In a world where we value individual accomplishment and financially reward the most persistent or strategic people – we have kids play a game that teaches the finding and staying in your place…falling in line…following the crowd.
Even as a 7-year-old, most of us felt this imbalance, this a sort of anxiety. Do we ‘play nice’ or do we ‘play to win’.
And we all know what ‘playing to win’ at musical chairs looks like. It’s sorta dragging your feet when crossing the ‘chair area’ and then rushing ahead (bumping into the person in front of you) when you’re in the chair desert. It’s not sitting down butt first, it’s slapping a hand onto the chair and side-swinging your butt into place. It’s holding onto your seat with both hands until the losers are all removed from the game area.
Most confusing and nerve-wracking is that – as much as we’re all expected to just let the circle dictate our future – the kids that played-to-win – the competitors who valued the prize over politeness – they were never pulled out of the game. A parent might have said “Let’s not play like that.” But, rarely (and in my case never) was anyone actually removed.
Musical Chairs is never fun, and, really, it doesn’t even seem fair. But it keeps going because adults force kids to play it.
Because – let’s be honest – No person (and especially no kid) would ever invent this game on their own. This is something the older generations put on their children year-after-year.
And really, don’t most kids party games that adults plan out lean into this same idea – let fate decide the winner – a strategy-less competition. I mean, Pin-The-Tale-On-The-Donkey and Piñatas they both have the same problems – telling kids to win while crippling their ability to actually do the thing to the best of their ability?
Why do we make kids do these frustrating things?
Maybe it’s because we don’t really understand how or when to teach kids to be competitive…or at least when it’s appropriate or not appropriate to make things about winning or loosing. I mean, at least I don’t know when or how to do this.
I’m trying to take parenting cues from Augustine’s schools, but they seem to be talking out of both sides of there mouth :
Don’t Compete
Almost overbearingly so, each of Augustine’s schools has put a damper on kids playing to ‘win’. (Actually her Montessori school had rules against any sort of play where there was a ‘winner’) Instead, her schools have pushed kids to play games for the fun of playing the game. Which is something I can completely get onboard with because Little kids don’t need to worry about winning.
- First, let’s be honest, kids don’t actually win anything worth winning. In the history of kids games, there have only ever been like 3 prizes that were worth the effort :
- A piece of the Aggro Crag
- The World-Band Radio from Carmen SanDiego
- Lunch with the Principal (which you couldn’t pay me to accept as an adult)
- Second, kids suck at everything. No one is born knowing how to play soccer or do gymnastics. Everyone has to spend years playing pretty terribly before they get even just ‘ok’. Competing out the gate is a horrible idea and can actually create worse players later on.
- Third, they all usually cheat. Of course, they’re not trying to cheat and if you call them on it, they cry, but still it’s cheating…they just don’t understand it. Most often, they just see a shorter route or better way to doing the task (like just picking up the soccer ball because hands are more dexterous that feet). So, they have to learn the parameters of competition – but if they’re taught in a competitive setting – they’re taught the rules in the framework of being a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ kid…no one’s bad for thinking hands are better than feet, they’re just good at critical thinking…hands do beat feet – every time.
Compete
As the same time, her schools have also broadsided us with institutional competitions. With no heads up, we’ll find out that the fun games scheduled for some random day were actually a ranked with winners, losers and prizes.
*Look, I don’t want to get all into how much this sucked, but just…I watched as 18 kids literally ran to the point that I told a teacher at lest 3 of them needed to take a break, and still they awarded a ‘tried-their-hardest’ award. What?!?!
So, what do we do?
If we look at how we behave with musical chairs, we encourage politeness but don’t really punish rude behavior. Which totally sucks, it does. So why do we do it…
…because we all know that the hard truth is ‘everything in life is a competition’ and we also know that there are very few actual rules, but we want a better world…we want following the social agreements and being polite to matter…
So we force our kids to carry out these marches, in a game where the expected behavior means one thing but the accepted behavior does another…and we let them begin to decide what sort of person they are.
Which is a lot to lay on a kid In between cake and a skate session, or while on a break from the absolute chaos that is a bounce house.
We should stop. Really.
And if none of this convinced you yet, then help bury this game for the simple fact that : no one has ever left a party saying ‘the highlight was when we sat in the chairs’.