Lazy Lout - A favorite imaginative tag game for 9 year olds +

An engrossing scenario sets a vibrant encounter that is more than Blob Tag

Oct 25, 2022

The wisdom of bringing the right game to children of any age can help create the conditions for full engagement: they willingly jump right in. For the nine-year-old, leaving the dreamy world of early childhood is an awakening process, part of a complete transformation of their young selves. Sometimes called the nine-year change or nine-year transition, this time of middle childhood can be puzzling to parents, as they may ask, “What happened to my darling child?”

Waldorf educator Rahima Baldwin Dancy explains that:

The nine-year-old is in the middle between the world of early childhood and the world of adolescence. The physical and emotional changes which you may observe in your nine-year-old child are the outer manifestations of the tremendous change in consciousness which is going on within the child’s expanding inner world. By understanding the nature of these changes, we can better provide support in parenting the nine year old.
Awakening to the world and a new sense of self brings with it a new need: to understand the real world of everyday life, while at the same time long for intimations of something beyond ordinary life. As parents and teachers, our task is to become loving authorities for the growing child, sharing both a true picture of the world and a sense of our own inner striving.
Parenting the Nine Year Old, from Waldorf In The Home.

For the 9 year old 4th grader, connecting their inner experience of themselves with meeting the outer world through movement games can help her feel secure when she may be feeling separate, apart, or withdrawn. For teachers, there are some brilliant classic games which address just this stage of development, full of fun and just the right amount of risk to meet the awakening child. Here’s my story of one, Lazy Lout.

A Children’s Classic is Rediscovered

I found Lazy Lout one lucky day while searching out games as a new teacher at the San Francisco Waldorf School in the early 1990s. At that time there was little written to guide a novice teacher in movement curriculum. One day a kind colleague slipped a thin sheaf of hand-written and much-photocopied circle games and tag games to me. These venerable notes gave me a very helpful start in the movement class. A few days later an old, dog-eared book appeared in my mailbox in the faculty room; Games Gymnastics Sport in Child Development by Rudolf Kischnick. Eureka! A “Waldorf” book about movement with games, translated into English! Now out of print, you can download a pdf here.

It was no easy guide, I discovered. I studied and struggled to understand the picture of the growing child Kischnick presented and then began to try out some of the games in my classes, with poor results. Most of these games didn’t seem to hit the right mark with my contemporary urban children. Maybe something was lost in translation, or my novice teaching style was ineffective, or our kids just weren’t being “met” by these old games. Most of the games proved to be duds.

For the 4th grader, I understood that connecting their inner experience of themselves with meeting the outer world through movement games can help her feel secure when she may be feeling separate, apart, or withdrawn.

Persisting, I struck gold. In a discussion of the 9 year-old child. Kischnick tells us,

“The theme of becoming awake and independent resounds in [these games]. The one who sleeps his time away or wakes up too early has to suffer harm or mockery.

After the nine-year-old child has managed to ‘grasp” his own soul-being, he begins to try out his own forces in the year that follows. He now experiences a confrontation with the forces which draw him down. These want to expand themselves within his soul and bind it more strongly to the physical than the individuality wants it to be.

If one is able to place these powers before the child in such a way that he recognizes them and wants to overcome them, much will be achieved. Again and again one finds that very specific images may occupy the child’s mind very strongly at this age. It is always the same figure which stands before the child’s soul, no matter whether his name is … Lazy Lout, Bridge Man or whatever. The child basically wants to put this image outside of himself, and observe and recognize it in order to be able to [work] with it.

But he is not yet able to overcome it. It is much more important that he comes to terms with it and this may be done thoroughly in the game….” 1

A Beloved Game is Introduced

Kischnick proceeds with setting the stage for Lazy Lout. I tried it with the 4th grade with only a glimmer of hope, but right away the students were engaged, listening carefully to my every word as the game was staged with a little story prompted by Kischnick but in my own words and descriptive narration with humor. The game was a big hit! There was a clear beginning, middle and end to each round, creating a progressive rhythm of quiet listening followed by a fine robust tag game that all the children could follow and feel free in. Quickly, Lazy Lout became a beloved game of middle childhood at SFWS, and the students asked to play the game again and again, even as the years went by and they “outgrew” it.

Small groups love it, large groups too. Indoors, it’s just fine and outdoors, it works like a charm. Just what is it about this game that makes it so successful? Let’s play it, in our mind’s eye. Here is my version of the game as it’s evolved for my students over the past 20+ years.

Lazy Lout’s Story

Once upon a time there was a village of the most industrious people. The children of the village woke up each morning before the roosters began to crow, and not only did they make their beds but they made breakfast for their parents too! They cleaned the kitchen, swept the floor, and washed the windows before the first rays of the sun peeked over the hill. They fed the pigs, milked the cows, and fetched the fresh eggs, and then, washed and dressed, they went to school.
Of course, they walked to school, on a long path that went right by the cave of the Lazy Lout. Now, the Lazy Lout did NOT rise each morning before the rooster’s crow. In fact, “he slept God’s day away.” He NEVER made his bed, or washed his sheets. He never took a bath or brushed his teeth. He never took out the garbage or washed the floors. He was filthy dirty and he smelled sour.
When the children passed his cave, he was still fast asleep in bed. The industrious children who had been awake before the dawn could not help themselves. As they passed the opening of his cave, they began to tease him by calling out, “Lazy lout! Lazy lout! You lazy lout!”
At first the Lazy Lout slept on and on, but after awhile he woke up, jumped to his feet, and began to chase the children to try to catch them. Woe be it, to any of the children if they should be touched, because if they do, they must become part of Lazy Lout himself.

Action of the Game

After the story is told, two children are invited to be the Lazy Lout and they join hands, choose a space to be the cave, and lie down with their eyes closed as though asleep. The children of the village chant and call towards the door of the cave, as close as they dare. Finally, the Lazy Lout, still holding hands, jumps up and begins to chase the children, tagging as they can.

Once tagged, a child must join hands with a Lazy Lout. Ultimately there are many!

No fewer than two, but as many as want to can be a Lazy Lout, working together in 2s and 3s or more to tag the others, until there is only one child left un-tagged, often breathless and stunned, who is called out to be “The Most Industrious Child of the Village!” at the game’s end. He or she is invited to be the new Lazy Lout (with another child) and the story and game repeats.

It’s not Blob Tag, It’s So Much More

A new student joining the class once said, “Oh, it’s Blob Tag.” The mechanics of the action may be similar, but it’s so much more. The child’s full imagination is engaged through the inner picturing of the story and the setting of the village, the industrious children, and the cave. Each one is one of the industrious children, anyone can become a Lazy Lout, everyone has a home and goes out from it and back to it again safely, with an adventure or two along the way.

Do you have a similar game that’s a hit with your children or students? Please tell us!

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