Tbone and the Weeping Princess are 5 and 3. Their cousin, who is much more worldly because she’s 6 and goes to Bigkids School, visited the other day. They had a lovely time wrecking the house, blaming each other for broken things, and asking for popsicles.
Unfortunately, Big Worldly Cousin also taught them to play Hide and Seek, and they’ve been playing it ever since.
It would be a lot more fun, perhaps, if either of them understood the concept of either “hiding” or “seeking.” For now, though, the game goes something like this:
Tbone tells WP to count while he hides. She runs into the hall and bellows, “OnetwofeerivesisSEVEN! Readynot, here I am!” and runs immediately back in, which is fine because Tbone has hidden, once again, behind the toy chest. She finds him. He cries, because she keeps finin’ him, and she don’t supposed to play that way!
I’ve explained about a hundred times that you have to pick a NEW place to hide, but no–behind the toy chest is his favorite, his bestest, his FAVORITE hiding place, and there he shall hide, each and every time.
After he finishes crying, they trade. He stands in the middle of the living room and counts while staring straight at WP as she hides–can you guess?–behind the toy chest. When he shouts, “Ready or NOT, WP, here I come!”, she stands up and yells, “Here I come, Tbone! Upriiiiize!!!” At least she doesn’t cry–she, for one, is happy to be found, because then they can start all over again!
With a couple of breaks for peanut butter and jelly, they can play this ALL DAY! It’s a blast! You can all come over and play, too, if you want. Just don’t try to hide behind the toy chest, because it gets a mite crowded back there.
I taught my 2-year-old to play Hide And Seek a while back, and now I spend half my day finding him hiding beside the dresser in his room. But he doesn’t always let me know he’s ready to play, so more than once, he’s hidden there until I realize, “Hey, where’s the kid? Oops, must be Hide & Seek time…” Then I find him, patiently waiting for me to find him.
I almost never have to look anywhere else, but once, he did crawl under his crib, and I panicked when I couldn’t find him in a teensy little 2 bedroom apartment. He just laughed his little head off.
(I used to live in Bloomington, bodypoet. Shame I moved away, or I’d send my kid over to show your kids how to give Mom a heart attack when they hide really good! )
My 13 year old step daughter, my wife, and my dauhter (who turned 5 yesterday - Happy Birthday to the Queen of the Universe) play Hide and Go Seek ALL THE TIME.
My daughter was a little fuzzy on the details for a while. She, too, would hide in the same place over and over again, but she was also likely to say “M - here I am!” whenever my stepdaughter got remotely close to her hiding place. QOTU was also prone to getting a giggle fit, which kind of took the challenge out of finding her.
My step-daughter, man, she can hide. She’s got legs that are about 8 feet long (that long, gangly, colt-like thing), but I’ve seen her come out of a space that you wouldn’t think could hold a mouse.
Bodypoet, once they get the hang of it, it’ll free up skads of time for you. Tell them both to hide, and then don’t try to find them. Load the dishwasher! Fold a load of laundry! Wax a floor! A good round of “Hide and I’m Not Looking Too Hard to Seek You” can last 20-30 minutes if you’re lucky!
I enjoy playing hide-n-seek with my four year-old. In the past, he would either hide in the same place each time or hide in the place that I last hid. Now that he’s experienced, he hides in all sorts of places.
Now I have to overcome the fear of playing hide-n-seek outside. With no fenced in back yard, a kid could hide just about anywhere. Next thing you know, my son will walk up to me and ask why I didn’t find him. To which I will respond that I didn’t think of looking in the dumpster in back of the convience store located 2 blocks away.
DangerGirl is 3.5 and loves Hide and Seek. She’s getting the hang of it pretty good now and can take turns hiding and seeking. She usually hides in my closet, so I drag out the drama by standing in the hall and loudly asking the baby “Is she in the bathroom? Nooooooo, is she in the bedroom?” before we go find her. She does vary the place sometimes, and she loves looking for me and the baby. We hide and then when she gets close, I say to the baby something like “She’ll never find us here. Heh, heh.” So she hears me and doesn’t get frustrated by looking too long.
My four-year-old loves to play hide and seek! She’ll hide, for instance, by lying on the bed and putting a pillow over her face. I like to pretend I can’t find her by looking all kinds of other places, and doing a running commentary the whole time. Then, it’s my turn to hide while she counts; I’ll do a similar pillow-or-towel over the head bit, and she’ll look everywhere for me, doing her own running commentary, which amuses the hell out of me!
When I was young I had a little cousin who wanted to play hide and seek. I didn’t want to play, because I was playing with my older cousins and brother. But she kept bugging me to play.
I eventually told her I’d play. I told her to go hide…and then I just left her. I knew exactly where she was hiding because I saw her hide. So occasionally I would go into the room where she was and say something like “I wonder where she could be?” I can’t remember how long I kept that up for.
When my sister and I were children, and we’d play hide and seek, we would sometimes hide under a pile of blankets and pillows on a couch or bed. When one of us, or our father, found the other, we would pretend not to know where they were, and simply sit or lay down on them, usually saying something along the lines of, “Ahhh. Time for a nap.” Much fun and laughs!
I’d forgotten all about this until I read this thread, but when she was 3, my daughter decided it would be funny to hide from me. I don’t know how long she was hiding - her dad was home, too, and he was working in the back yard while I was out front, so we each assumed the other had her. By the time we realized neither of us had seen her in a while, she’d fallen asleep in her (very good) hiding place, and we searched frantically for her all over the house. When we didn’t find her, I couldn’t remember if I might have left the front door open while going in and out, and we started looking out front, too. We’d already alerted the neighbors and I was just getting ready to call the police when she woke up and came out to see what all the fuss was about.
Hide and seek wasn’t a favorite game of mine for some time after that.
My 3 year old loves hide and seek as well. She always wants me to count while she hides. I dutifully cover my eyes, count to ten, open my eyes, and there she is, standing there in front of me and watching me. I explain to her the rules again, and once again cover my eyes and count. I open them, and she’s still standing in front of me, only now she has her back to me and her eyes covered as well.
Another explanation of the rules sends her to the next room, where she stands in the middle of the room with her eyes covered again. Apparently, if I can’t see her, she can’t see me.
When I hide from her, she gamely looks around for a minute or two, then just sort of wanders away, usually to go watch TV. She doesn’t let me know that I don’t need to continue cowering in the closet. I usually spend that time making shopping lists in my head.
But she keeps wanting to play. She’s a pretty smart kid, just doesn’t understand the finer points of hide and seek yet.
Howzabout teaching them the alternate version, Sardines? One person is IT ,and he goes to hide. The others go to find him, and when they find him, they stay there with him, all mooshed into the toybox (or wherever)like sardines. Last person to find the hiders is the next person to go hide.
We used to play hide and seek on rainy days in gym class when I was in elementary school. We’d set up the crash mats and tumbling mats into mazes and shut off the lights in the gym. It got pretty spooky for 8 year olds. Loved it.
What about the variant I know, where once the seeker starts seeking, you try to get back to base before they can touch you? Whoever gets caught first becomes the seeker during the next round. That would, at the very least, head off the kids hiding for HOURS and panicking parents – with a little one, it’d be easy enough to let them get to base first at least some of the time.
My niece, who is 8 now, went through a Hide & Seek craze for awhile when she was about 4. Whenever she was visiting Grandma’s, it was all she wanted to play… all day. Mom and I would always make a big show of hunting for her, narrating every step of the search (“Where is she?” “Is she behind the couch?” “No!” etc.), ignoring the giggles that invariably came from behind door to the hall closet until it we’d worked up enough suspense and “found” her.
Her little sister, thank goodness, did not follow this same craze, but at about the same age has a penchant for bizarre and pointless “Knock knock” jokes that she makes up all by herself.
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