The Girl Who Couldn't Smile Read Online Free

the rest of the week redecorating, fitting in the usual activities around the work. It was a gamble, and one that had the potential to go badly wrong, but I hoped that by taking some time to make the playroom look better, the children might start to feel proud of it, and thereby respect it. None of them thought anything of taking a chunk out of the plasterwork with a chair leg, or writing on the furniture with felt-tip pens, or even disembowelling a soft toy. Secretly I also hoped that when they saw the transformation progressing before their eyes, they might develop a sense of camaraderie – Little Scamps was sorely lacking in any vestige of community spirit.
    When I’d broached the idea, Susan and Tush had been less than enthusiastic. There was, they pointed out, nothing inherently wrong with the murals and overall décor: why create a lot of unnecessary problems by replacing them? In theory,I agreed, but if we were to have a fresh start, we needed to wipe the slate clean, figuratively and literally.
    Susan was doubtful. ‘Most of the children depend on stability and routine,’ she’d said. ‘If they walk in here and all the toys and furniture are gone, and we’re planning to paint over the pictures on the walls, and the usual games and activities are cancelled for the foreseeable future, well, I’m guessing we’ll have the Little Scamps version of a nuclear holocaust on our hands!’
     
    ‘I thought about that when I was hatching my plan,’ I said. ‘There is indeed a set routine at Little Scamps. And I’m sure the children find it comforting and a stabilizing influence. However, they also go out of their way to transform every session into utter chaos. Would you agree with that, Susan?’
    ‘That’s fair,’ she said.
    ‘Well, I’m not suggesting we dump the timetable. I am saying we need a shake-up. Along with freshening up the paintwork, I think we should start sticking rigidly to the rules. As to the usual activities, well, we can stop for storytime, take a break for music, and maybe we could even divide the group into teams and get some to do standard work while others do painting – the possibilities are pretty much endless … We can play it by ear, maybe. But the group has to understand that we’re going to see an activity through from beginning to end, regardless of what they throw at us. The day-to-day running of Little Scamps continues, but around it we paint the room.’
    The women had looked dubious, but they’d agreed to give it a go.
    I had no intention of using the children as some kind of cheap labour force, and I was well aware that pre-schoolers have a concentration span that extends, at most, to forty-fiveminutes, but on average that will get you through twenty minutes of any game before you need to do something completely different. That time could be cut in half for children with intellectual disabilities. I was also acutely conscious of the health and safety issues involved in getting a group of small children to work with paint.
    At the centre of all this lay an important issue: the children had been calling the shots. The adults were there, as far as the children were concerned, to get them food, clean up their mess and provide a space for their uproar. They treated Tush and Susan with the contempt that they reserved for one another and seemed to hold no one in high esteem. A major part of this lesson was about mutual respect. I was going to sell it to the kids as selfishness: won’t it be nice for you to have a room you helped paint? By doing nice things for ourselves, we learn to be nice to others.
    At any rate, that was the idea.
    The children stood just inside the doorway, apparently puzzled by the scene before them. No one moved. As I had suspected, with their familiar environment taken away, the group seemed ill at ease and uncertain how to behave. Past experience with children had taught me that every collective will have one or two leaders to whom the others look for