I only went to Chuck E. Cheese once as a child, and I didn’t remember the sheer volume of noise that permeates the child-centered zone of games and activities. It prompted me to think about how people process and observe such spaces as children versus as adults, and the differing determinations that come from processing at alternate developmental periods. I had the opportunity to attend a birthday party for my friend’s niece at Chuck E. Cheese and decided to use it as the foundation for participant observation. I reasoned that a space made for children, specifically for children to have fun and explore, was the perfect opportunity to observe child agency in action. 

Saturday is the ideal day for parents to plan birthday parties for their children with their children’s friends, as it is generally an available time for everyone to be able to gather. However, when you get six families who have the same idea and all their children’s friends together, even a relatively large space like Chuck E. Cheese begins to feel small. Different pitches of excitable voices harmonize with the cheesy upbeat music of games, and the artificial voices of arcade games designed to draw the attention of beings with short attention spans. All of this noise was overwhelmed by the center stage when Chuck E. himself came out to dance with the birthday children and their friends, the music warring with the screeches and giggles of the sea of wriggling bodies who tried to follow his moves while being the one to claim they were dancing closest to him. 

Lights accompanied the sounds, flashing in yellows, blues, reds, pinks, and greens of eye squinting shades. They reflected against the shiny plastic bracelets, necklaces, and rings that could be claimed as prizes at the ticket booth. Video games flashed from scene to scene, the voices of the player lost within feet of the monitor, often making it difficult for even the player to understand what was happening, having to follow the quick paced graphics without the benefit of continuous verbal input. Adults had to take care as they moved about the tightly packed maze of games and activities, keeping an eye out for tiny bodies that appeared between one breath and the next, easy to trip over if great care wasn’t taken. 

The generally pleasing scent of baking pizza was overpowered by the underlying eye-watering smell of burnt cheese and bread. Depending on where you stood, that nauseating combination would couple with the sickly sweet scent of spilled soda, tugging at your shoes and leaving a sticky, squicking noise for several steps afterwards. Across the room where the indoor trampoline was set up, rubber intermingled with smelly feet, and the burnt pizza was almost preferable. Once in a while, a blast of rain-fresh air refreshed the area when the door opened. 

My friend’s niece was celebrating her fourth birthday. She’s full of personality and knows exactly what she wants, and has no problem communicating that to those around her. She had spotted one of the basketball simulation games, where the ticket releases basketballs and you have a couple of minutes to get as many baskets as you can. She wanted to try it but she was too short, though she didn’t seem to realize it. She scanned her card (no longer do they have tokens but cards with a certain amount of “tokens” on them) and tried to figure out how to play. Even the start button was above her line of sight. I lifted her up to stand on the lip and showed her the start button. I was aware at this moment that I was both a participant and observer, helping her engage while also noticing what my involvement revealed about how adults shape children’s play. She squealed in excitement when the balls rolled down towards her. Lifting one up she tossed it, and it didn’t even make it halfway across the court, but it bounced and that was enough for her. She tossed the balls for a few minutes but quickly lost interest when she realized that she wasn’t yet able to make the basket and asked to get down. I placed her down and she skipped off to her next game happily and eagerly. 

As I finished the round for her, I overheard another child telling his adult that he wanted to try the game. He was from one of the other birthday parties, where the birthday child was turning three, and so he likely was between three and five depending. The adult told him no, that he should try another game because it was a waste of tokens; he was too short and wouldn’t be able to do it. He continued to plead with her, telling her he just wanted to try and throw them, and as he spoke he grew louder. I recognized that the adult was already at the end of their tether, something that seemed common with the adults (no doubt because of everything happening around us), she finally snapped at him, told him they weren’t playing that game and wasting her money, and that he could go find something else to do or he could go sit with the adults and babies at the table. He began to cry loudly. After being around children at various stages of development my whole life, I find it usually pretty easy to figure out what kind of crying they’re doing. This cry was of frustration, of someone not being heard, and was no doubt exacerbated by his own overwhelm from all the stimuli happening around us. His adult huffed and followed through on her threat, dragging him back towards the tables, his gasps and cries dissipating behind the other noise the further away they got. 

It was amazing to me that, even in a space that is made for children, with the intent of them having fun and being able to explore on their own terms, their agency was still being tested and ignored. Was the cost of a single token really worth ignoring what the child was asking, and ruining both of their afternoons? The game wasn’t dangerous, and no one else in line was a proper age to play. It would have been easy to let him try and throw a couple of balls. Either he would have grown bored, as my friend’s niece did, and leave partway through, or he would have had great fun throwing the balls until they stopped, and she could have drawn his attention to something else. It had me wondering about the importance of a singular token to an adult versus a child. To her, it was a waste if he couldn’t play properly and potentially earn some tickets, but he was just there to play the games and try things out. Why wasn't his desire to play and try something new more of a consideration in her decision? If nothing else, it could have been a learning experience for later when, maybe, he ran out of tokens and wanted to play something else, or wanted to get a prize and hadn’t won enough tickets with which to choose anything. She could have then reminded him of his choice to try a game he wasn’t quite big enough for. That would have allowed for him to exercise his agency and right to choose, while she would have been able to teach him that there are some things he has to be a little older to be able to properly participate in. 

It was interesting to view the various dynamics. There were adults like this, who followed their children around and essentially planned their entire play time for them, and then there were parents who sat staring at their phones while their toddlers approached others, and attempted to get on the trampoline despite the fact it required a special ticket and had a certain height/weight requirement. That feels as though it has less to do with agency and more to do with a disconnection between the parent and parenting responsibilities. Children should have the freedom to make and express choices and it is a parent’s responsibility to mediate these things. Allowing the little boy to try the basketball game and lose a token wouldn’t have hurt anyone, but the toddler climbing on the table unattended could have ended badly. There is a happy medium that isn’t quite being recognized, and it’s related to the societal view of children and childhood as being innocent, malleable, passive parties, while policy and legality throws this out the window when children do something they decide is so wrong that it makes them irredeemable. Even in a place made for them, many aren’t given the courtesy of wanting what they want. It felt to me like a metaphor for schools. They are intended for children, to inspire and to teach them, but then what they are expected to learn is scripted by people who haven’t been children in many years and haven’t taken the time to ask children what they’re interested in or how they best learn. Observing these interactions reminded me that child agency is not only about choice, but about how adults frame what choices are possible in the first place.