How children use play to make sense of terrorism: Guardian article

[FSFRebecca]

I read this article a week or so ago, it was published in The Guardian newspaper shortly after the terror attacks in Nice.

I have been thinking about it for a week or so, mulling over what happens at our nursery. We often have 'gun play' issues and following staff training by Annie McTavish about Superhero play and gun play we now allow this game as long as all the children involved are willing participants and abide by the rules. We have also worked with parents to help them understand how important it is for children to work through their thoughts and feelings in their games. I think this article is excellent and I will be sharing it with staff and putting it into the 'folder of useful information that we might need to share with parents at some point'. I hope you find it as interesting and thought provoking as I did.

 

How children use play to make sense of terrorism

[Cait]

Yes, very interesting article. It's a perennial problem, I think. It's never going to go away, is it? It's really hard though, as an adult who understands what guns really mean, to watch children assuming they are fun things.

 

I always made sure that anyone in gun play was a willing participant too, I think that's essential for children to understand. I think it fosters an understanding about other people's feelings too, in the same way that perhaps a child, plonking a cup and saucer down on the railway track another child is building does. It's about fostering respect. (Sorry, I'm rambling.....)

[FSFRebecca]

Yes Cait I agree, also it's not right to tell children that people with guns are 'baddies' because so many service men and women carry guns and there are many early years settings on military bases.

[FSFRebecca]

A colleague has just raised the interesting point of how do you differentiate between children who are 'working through their feelings' in their imaginative play and those children who are at risk of radicalisation and act out role play games because of conversations that they hear at home.

[MegaMum]

A colleague has just raised the interesting point of how do you differentiate between children who are 'working through their feelings' in their imaginative play and those children who are at risk of radicalisation and act out role play games because of conversations that they hear at home.

Interesting point!!

[Froglet]

A colleague has just raised the interesting point of how do you differentiate between children who are 'working through their feelings' in their imaginative play and those children who are at risk of radicalisation and act out role play games because of conversations that they hear at home.

I think you'd have to monitor closely and look at the role play alongside other things which may indicate that a child might be vulnerable to radicalisation. I can't remember them all off the top of my head but I remember being told that they were the same kind of things that made a child vulnerable to CSE. The training I did was at a primary school though - would the same kind of things apply in an EY setting?