What makes a child friendly community?

Editor's Notes

• #4: General introduction
• #9: Throughout history children have been a marginalised social group. They have been constructed in different ways, at one point they were seen as inherently evil and needed teaching, and in some cases beating, to set them on a path of righteousness! There were also times when children were seen as angelic, and others when they were seen as ‘needy’. There were times when children had to work the farms, climb up chimneys, go down mine shafts, etc. And there were times, to this current day in fact, where children are perceived as in a process of development. The question is, developing into what? In schools and childcare establishments across the UK children are catered for, not as a children in the hear and now, but rather as adults in the making, as if adulthood is the necessary end-point of one’s developmental journey. This has invariably meant that most of what adults do for children is not about them as children, but about them as the adults they will one day become when they contribute as ‘full’ human beings to economic society. The very nature of this paradigm, of this set of beliefs and attitudes shapes not only what we think of children, but also of how we engage with them. Thus education is not a process to serve transformation in the individual, but a vehicle for producing adult commodities. Children are constantly set apart from adults, they are what geographers and sociologists call, being ‘othered’. That is, if they are not adult, they must be something different, something other. By ‘othering’ children we have unfortunately created a world that is dominated by adult ways of being, adult ideals. When it comes to looking at children’s risk taking behaviour, then, what we are seeing is risk from the eyes of an adult, in the context of a world constructed by adults, managed by adults, enjoyed freely by adults. Can we really measure children’s risky play through an adult understanding of the world? Where are the children’s viewpoints in all of this? Where are their perspectives?
• #10: A matrix grab of children in different cultures during the 20th and 21st centuries. 3 images you like, and 3 you don’t. What does the selection of these images tell us about ourselves, and the way we view children? Are we creating back stories for each of these children, based on all the story elements we see in the pictures? Are we making assumptions? Do we do this to children we meet in the flesh? Thus in understanding children, we must first understand ourselves, and how we view the world.
• #11: Again, another serious term, which loosely means adults dominate a child’s play, or children’s play worlds and spaces. This happens in many forms for many reasons. Some adults have what is called un-played-out material; that is, they didn’t play fully as a child and use their job to play themselves, to the point they dominate the play themes (Dr Death example). I do not believe adults have un-played-out material, as I believe we are all players for life, and that play is only suppressed by being adult and doing adult things. However, just being an adult, with adult motives can dominate children’s play. We tend to treat children as adults in the making, on a life trajectory towards adulthood, as if being adult is the ultimate aim of life. Would we treat becoming dead as equally exciting?! Children are not little adults, or adults in the making. They’re human beings on the same life course as any other human being of any age. When you think of humans in this way it is hard to use concepts and constructs like childhood and adulthood to separate us as a species. It is this seperation that often leads to issues of power and dominance, not unlike those that were once seen between males and females, black and white people, disabled or non-disabled, etc, etc.
• #12: Do we see cracks in pavement?...
• #15: We can look at play through many different lenses, psychologically, as in the psycholudic model, or in the way we provide the space, time and resources to maximize on a rich variety of play experiences. However one of the most crucial elements is about how we, the adults, approach play, and more importantly, children’s play. Let’s take this example found in a ancient text called the Buskers Guide to Playing Out. Imagine Jenny, six years old, is playing in the sandpit. The adult approaches and asks: What you doing, Jenny? Jenny turns to the adult and says: “I'm burying Boris the dinosaur in the sand, because he’s been naughty.” The adult responds: “That’s nice dear, but just remember your snack will be ready in a few minutes so you must wash your hands, and don’t get your new shoes dirty.” The adult walks away. There’s nothing wrong with this approach or response by the adult, although it fails to do one thing, perhaps the most important thing. It fails to recognize Jenny’s moment of play as the most important part of the interaction. The adult tries to pull jenny from her play into their own adult world, where adult things are thought to be more important, such as cleaning hands, eating snacks and keeping shoes clean. What if the adult had taken a different approach. “Hi Jenny, what are you doing?” “I’ve buried Boris the dinosaur in the sand.” “Not Boris! The Dinosaur!” the adult backs away. “Last time he escaped he chased me around the garden trying to bite me on the bottom!” In this example the adult responded in a playful way, and probably, as a result, will now have access to Jenny’s play world. It is the stepping out of adult mode into playful mode that often makes the difference in our relationships with children. To reiterate this point, and some of the earlier points made, place complex object, like a book, in the middle of circle and ask individuals to describe what they see. Get to a point where at least one person cannot see a part of the object that someone else opposite can. That is to demonstrate that we all come at situations, contexts from different perspectives, different angles. But being playful could be the one means by which we all approach our work with children, and certainly our relationships with them.
• #16: Although this tern sounds brutal, what it means is that children will bring their own play to its natural conclusion when given the time and space to do so. In the picture the girl at the back has decided to leave the net of her own accord, she’s finished playing with this object. Too often, however, other aspects of life, often determined by adults, stop children from annihilating their own play; think of clock watching, telling children to stop what they’re doing because some other pressing adult concern comes into play.
• #17: Dysplay is when a child gets no response from the play cues they send out, and as a result their play drive decreases and they may become socially isolated, or even play deprived (we’ll chat about this shortly). The playworker might support the child in getting appropriate responses so that this doesn’t happen.
• #18: Introduce by playing film – Out to Play