The Secret Lives of four-year-olds

I recently watched channel 4’s documentary The Secret Life of Four-Year-Olds. The documentary follows ten four-year-olds as they meet at nursery, exploring how children make and break friendships, share, stand up for themselves and find their place in a new social group.

The hour-long documentary is set in a classroom rigged with cameras and was an absolute joy to watch. It was fascinating to see these little pre-schoolers socially interact with each other and at an unconscious level the basic politics at play within a playground. The verbal insults were most amusing, “You’re just a tiny mouse with a purple toilet,” said a little boy to the girl who wouldn’t let him have a go on the scooter. “I’m going to tell my cat to scratch your face,” replied the little girl. 

Watching the documentary made me think of my time at work. Was the workplace really any different to what is witnessed in a classroom? Sure, I agree that office politics takes place in a more discrete way; nonetheless the behaviours are very much the same. I think of colleagues trampling on each other for a slightly bigger bonus, bosses underhandedly promoting the favourites, the perils of making the right alliances. 

I especially enjoyed the ‘chocolate cake test’, where a very large sliced chocolate cake was left in the middle of the classroom and no instructions were given. Would the little ones give into temptation? And the ones that did were punished retrospectively – that’s not fair. Life at work really isn’t that different from life in the playground, especially when there is chocolate cake involved!