Sock Wars!

I love it when you stumble upon a great kids game that isn’t made of plastic, doesn’t cost anything, and which the parents love as much as the kids. Mums and dads, I give you … Sock Wars!

The rules of play are simple - each player rushes round the house collecting as many socks as they can, rolled up in balls. Next, assume positions – behind chairs in a triangle formation is good. Then, pelt the living daylights out of each other! You can throw as hard as you like and nobody gets hurt - bar the odd one in the eye - and it’s hard to break a window with socks – (much easier with a Bob the Builder hammer, as we’ve learnt from experience).

You can invoke the STOP! rule so that if you get hit by thermal ski socks and find you’re wearing your glasses Eric Morecambe style on the side of your head, you just shout STOP! – and you get a moment to recover your dignity and catch your breath before launching a counter attack on the little blighters who landed that one on you.

You can tell it’s a good game because of the helpless giggling and shrieking. And that’s just me! Lawrence Cohen in his brilliant book Playful Parenting - using play to raise confident children - says the golden rule is to follow the giggles – it’s the sound of children and parents reconnecting.

It is a war game, and some people might not be comfortable with that. It lends itself to explosion noises, shouts of ‘Incoming!’ and ‘Gonna be a big one Mummy!’ and running battles along hallways taking cover in doorways. Lawrence Cohen has an interesting take on this too – it’s play in which children experience their aggression in a safe environment, test out their muscles and explore a world of conflict and strategies. He favours make believe weapons, ‘ the kind you make with your finger or a cardboard tube or a stick’ – or a pair of socks – which ‘allow children to create games and rules and play out themes.’

The adult’s role is to keep it light-hearted. That makes me feel better about rolling Starsky & Hutch style across the beds to ambush my daughter for a pair of Pringle knee-highs.

Perhaps the best thing about Sock Wars is that it’s a great game for everyone – and a cathartic experience for parents. THAT’S for fighting over the tomato sauce when I wanted you to sit down for dinner! And THAT’S for waking me up at six every morning and pestering me to put the telly on! Sweden would make this game illegal if they knew how much I enjoyed lobbing hand grenades at my three year old son. But anything that makes me laugh that much with my children is a keeper.