Playing Through Testing Times

As part of our Uniforms on Duty series, we spoke to Sarah in Dublin she described her little boy’s positivity during self-isolation.

Antigen tests: we’ll all be happy when we don’t have to worry about them anymore!

At the start of January 2022, Covid arrived at our house. And of course, that meant everybody needed to be tested regularly. As time went on, the children ran away as soon as they saw the swabs coming.

But my two-and-a-half-year-old, Oliver, decided to use his My Little Uniform scrubs to make the experience a little less awful for everybody. He got fully involved in the process, especially by placing the drops onto the test cassette.

We have a lot of experience of testing in our house; my partner is a Swabber in the Mullingar Test Centre. Before the Omicron surge, he sent a photo of Oliver in his scrubs to his colleagues. They loved the picture and joked about it, saying “You never know, we might need him after Christmas!”

Another favourite costume of Oliver’s is his Postal Worker uniform. He loved surprising Gerry, our Postman, by wearing it to answer the door one day. He burst out as proud as punch, excited to show it off. Gerry loved seeing it and it was great for Oliver to chat with him and relate to him.

The Garda uniform has given my eldest son, Alfie, a very definite new identity as “Garda Alfie”. His ten-year-old cousin calls him Garda Alfie all the time, it’s like it’s just his name now. I think it’s important for children to feel safe around the Gardaí and not to be worried that they are going to come and get them. I want my children to know they can approach them and that they are good people. I find the Garda costume helps with this.

Our collection of costumes is constantly growing. As well as the ones I’ve already mentioned, my daughter Lily has the Astronaut and we also have the Paramedic, Chef and Postal Worker.

We have so many because my mam enjoys giving them as gifts. I want to get a special rail for them soon! We also have some real-life and wooden toys and accessories that we use with the costumes to add to the imaginative play.

As our collection gets bigger, so does the range of jobs the children get to explore. Swabber was one we probably never thought much of until recent times. But now little Oliver is the expert, keeping everyone’s spirits up!

It will be interesting to see if the costumes influence the children’s career choices in years to come.

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