All My Children

Giving a party can be a great deal of fun. It can be held to celebrate something special, or because it’s a particular time of the year; or it can be a spur of the moment get-together with friends. But whatever the occasion you’ll want it to go with a swing. And the nicest parties are usually those which have some careful planning behind them: ideas to get them going, and ideas for toning them down if they get too exuberant. Continue Reading »

• Parentless children: Again, following a divorce, children may find themselves in a catch-22 situation where they feel unwanted by both their new stepfather and their new stepmother. This seems to affect the boys especially who tend to be far more rebellious than girls. For a time, boys may move between the two new ’sets of parents‘ without ever settling down, until the day comes when they feel unwanted by both ’sets’ and decide to make it on their own on the street by leaving their families.

Continue Reading »

The Cotonou Seminar pointed out that ‘among the reasons most often heard from street children, that of the family was the most common to explain their departure from home‘. The immediate causes given by the Philippines on why there are street children all have to do with the family. Vanistendael also said the same: ‘the immediate cause is nearly always a dysfunctioning in the family‘. ‘The reasons why children take to the streets are complex and manifold. Broadly speaking, a distinction can be drawn between the push and pull factors. Continue Reading »

Girls are as subject as boys to all kinds of frustrations, very much including sibling rivalry and anger at their parents, and so it would serve them equally well to be able to discharge their anger through symbolic play, as with toy guns. Furthermore it would prevent their feeling frustrated because an important type of symbolic play available to boys is not available to them. By playing with guns they too would get things out of their system. They would realize that boys are not advantaged in comparison to girls in this respect. Continue Reading »

There are many contributions that only parents can make to their child’s play. For example, no teacher, and certainly no age-mate, can be as deeply and personally involved in play that seems to relate to the child’s future as are his parents. Play is anchored in the present, but it also takes up and tries to solve problems of the past, and it is often future-directed as well. Continue Reading »

Parents who do not consider that the child’s pleasure may not be parallel or equal to their own can create serious problems for him. An example of this can be observed in roughhousing play between parents and children. Children usually enjoy such play, but only up to a point. Most infants and small children enjoy being thrown up into the air and caught, if this is done with moderation and great care, and not for too long. Such limited play reassures them that they can safely lose contact for a moment with their parent without danger; further, it gives them confidence that their parents can turn potentially dangerous situations into safe ones. Continue Reading »

Few other types of play can quite compare with doll play for eliciting deep parental involvement. Still, there are many other aspects of children’s play which can affect a parent deeply, through recollections and other feelings it activates, particularly when a child’s play reminds the parent of having played with the same toy, or having played in similar fashion. Also, the older the child gets, the more easily do play activities echo not only the parent’s own childhood experiences, but also his present hobbies or recreations. For example, the teenager who can play a serious game of chess has an experience very similar to his parent’s in doing so. Continue Reading »

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

Certainly parents are happy to see their children absorbed in play. But are they equally happy to become engrossed in the playing themselves? If a child’s play is pleasurable to a parent chiefly because he can then pursue his adult activities without feeling bad about neglecting his child, it does not take the child long to realize this. He soon learns that to his parents play itself is not very important, but his being out of their way is; this lesson simultaneously diminishes him and his enjoyment of play, and reduces the capacity of play to develop his intelligence and personality. Continue Reading »

A child doesn’t want to be “kept quiet.” He needs and wants to do things that are important to him. For example, it is always exciting for the young child to investigate the contents of a purse—but nothing can compare with turning his mother’s purse inside out. Fascinating as adult secrets are in general, none are more interesting than those of one’s parents. The child is curious about the contents of his parents‘ drawers! What other people do, what they have, how they organize things—all these become important as the child begins to learn about the differences in how things are done by his family and how they’re done in other households. But first he wants to learn how things are done at home. Continue Reading »

On the other hand, such parallel investment in play can work well for a time and then backfire through adult motives. The following story is an illustration of the point, and it involves a partly happy but much more unhappy memory that haunted a highly successful man all his life. The man’s father was very much involved in stamp collecting, so the youngster needed little urging to become an avid stamp collector too. Continue Reading »