Linden Watches the Door

Linden is the slowest Sidekick to start playing. New Sidekicks sometimes think she’s shy. She isn’t. She’s noticing.

When a little kid arrives in the Playroom, Linden doesn’t rush over. She crouches down a little way off, hands on her knees, and watches for a minute. What are they picking up? What are they doing with it? Are their shoulders up near their ears or loose and relaxed? Are they smiling, frowning, chattering, silent?

“It’s like reading the weather before you go out,” she says. “You wouldn’t put shorts on in a snowstorm.”

She learned it from a boy called Priyam.

Priyam was five, and on his first Saturday he stood in the middle of the rug holding a toy dinosaur, not playing with it. Linden had only been a Sidekick for a few weeks, and she wanted to help. She knew all the moves. She thought Bumpus’s troll might make him laugh.

But something made her wait. She crouched down and watched instead.

Priyam wasn’t looking at the toys. Every few seconds, his eyes flicked to the Playroom door, the one that led to the cooking class where his dad was. His hand was squeezing the dinosaur very tight. He wasn’t bored. He was worried.

Linden thought about the troll. A troll leaping out at him right now would not be funny. It would be frightening.

So she didn’t do the troll. She sat down near the door, a little way from Priyam, and started quietly playing with her own dinosaur, walking it up and down beside her. She didn’t look at him much. She just let him see that the door was close and the game was gentle.

After a while, Priyam came and sat a bit nearer. Then nearer again. Then he walked his dinosaur beside hers.

“Your daddy’s just through there,” Linden said, nodding at the door. “Cooking.”

Priyam nodded. His shoulders came down a little.

By the end of the morning, his dinosaur was having a dinosaur picnic with Linden’s dinosaur, and Priyam was explaining which dinosaurs ate leaves and which ate sandwiches. He didn’t look at the door nearly as often.

Linden told Sola about it afterwards. “If I’d jumped straight in with the troll,” she said, “I think he’d have cried.”

“What told you?” asked Sola.

“His eyes kept going to the door. And he was squeezing the dinosaur really hard.”

That’s the skill of noticing first. All five coach moves work better if you choose the right one, and to choose the right one, you have to see what’s actually happening. A kid deep in a careful game might want Following. A bored kid might want Bumpus’s troll or Leif’s one small idea. A worried kid might just want someone calm sitting nearby.

You can’t know which until you look.

Linden has a little checklist she runs in her head. What are they doing? How does their body look? What are their eyes doing? Then she picks a move. And if it doesn’t work, she goes back to watching and tries another.

It looks like doing nothing. It’s actually the first move of all.

Look before you join.