My Child Called This Character a Scary Baby. Then He Gave It a Soccer Medal.

I created three possible friends for Camel and let my child decide what happened next. His response changed the experiment completely.

EXPERIMENTS

8/26/20262 min read

For my first experiment, I turned my child’s school watercolour of a camel into a playable game.

For the second, I wondered what would happen if Camel had friends.

I created three possible characters: a fox, a tortoise and a cactus. Then I showed them to my child without giving him names, stories or any explanation of who they were supposed to be.

He made his decisions quickly.

The fox was Camel’s friend. The fox and the tortoise were cute.

The cactus was different.

He said it looked like a scary baby because it had one tooth and different sized eyes.

I thought that meant the cactus had failed.

It had not.

He said he kind of liked him and wanted Baby Cactus to have a soccer medal.

So I added one.

When I showed him the new version, he was ecstatic. Suddenly he loved Baby Cactus. I had not changed the tooth, fixed the eyes or made the character less strange. I had only followed his idea.

That was the part of this experiment I did not expect.

I began by asking whether I could create friends for Camel. But the more interesting question became whether my child could help shape the world around the character.

The easy part was making another version. The valuable part was leaving enough room for him to have the better idea.

Apparently Baby Cactus did not need to be less scary. He needed a soccer medal.

I also made a printable page so you can bring Camel and the new friends into your own play world. Print it at home, cut out the characters, and see what stories your children or grandchildren create.

Print Camel and Friends - Adult help recommended for cutting.

Which one would you have chosen: the fox, the tortoise or Baby Cactus?

Experiment 2 of 100

Print Camel and Friends

Lisa Lieu

Founder and Systems Builder | Operations, Technology, AI, and Leadership