SHALL WE PLAY?

DISCUSSIONS ON THE CONTESTED TERRAIN OF WHO, WHEN AND WHERE CHILDREN PLAY

Abstract

While there is a widespread consensus today that play is fundamental to children, we are still constrained by an uninvested and uninformed understanding of this practice by most of the adults who coexist with children in the various spaces in which they live. As a result, there has been a gradual loss of children’s autonomy in play, by virtue of a lack of effort to enhance possibilities on the part of the adults who accompany them but also as consequence of a shortage of spaces available for this purpose as well as from a certain understanding of time, which is a critical element in the way we allow them to grow and flourish – all of these factors, underpinned by generalized public disinvestment in this subject-making process, which paves the way to dead-ends and impossibilities in the construction of alternatives to the way of the world. However, human behavior or understanding seldom emerges without foundation. In this brief reflection, I sketch a broad outline of the issue of play, dividing it into three vectors that can help explain it and untangle it. I consider the when, the where, and the who of play, to map out the possibility of expanding children’s opportunities to play, without unnecessary restraints or constraints.