A Playworker's Guide to Understanding Children's Behaviour

Working with the 8-12 Age Group

Andrea Clifford-Poston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780367323905
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429910432
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

How do I manage an aggressive child positively when I have twenty other children who need my attention? How can I develop a good relationship with a child I seem to dislike? How do I maintain a positive working relationship with the parents of a disturbed and disturbing child? Written in a jargon-free, readable style, with many real life examples, this book is a must-have resource for playworkers seeking to enhance their skills as a whole. It highlights how the way we think about children's behaviour colours the way we react to it. It offers playworkers a different way of understanding many ordinary childhood behaviours such as lying, stealing and bullying, and gives practical advice not only on management but on how practitioners can identify, trust and develop their own skills.

Part One:
Playworkers, Children and Behaviour

Acting the Part: How Club is Like, and Unlike, the Family

Playworkers are in a good position to free a child from a restrictive role they have adopted due to their family dynamics

Children are never simply themselves. They carry with them all sorts of thoughts and ideas about themselves inherited from family life, particularly from their role in the family. Conflict is inevitable in families and in order to survive, all families have to find their own particular way of managing tensions. Often this is done unconsciously by family members taking on roles like “the clever one”, or “the pretty one”, for example.

Children often absorb their family role as an identity. Sometimes this is not a problem—the family survives and the child functions. The risk is when a child believes the family role is their only way of being, the only version of themselves that other people will find lovable and acceptable. A child can bring its family role to both school and club life, in that they may behave in club in the way they behave at home. Children at club should be feeling free to experiment with what they have learned about themselves in the family. For this reason, playworkers need to be aware of when it is appropriate to reinforce a family role and when it might be in the child’s interests for club to offer the child an alternative way of being themselves.

Let us think about three frequently observed family roles: The sensible child, the scapegoat and the troublemaker.

The sensible child

Sensible children like nine year old Tom can be a boon. Mature, cheerful, willing, reliable, efficient; they are a natural choice to be given responsibilities. But sometimes sensible children can find their role a strain. Recently Tom’s playworker had noticed a change in him. He seemed less good humoured and somewhat reluctant about his tasks at club. He seemed to be a avoiding other children. One day, Tom drew a picture of a mediaeval castle with three girls playing in the grounds. A soldier on horseback was riding away from the castle, another soldier paraded the turrets. Tom explained that the soldier riding away was the “war knight”—he had “gone off to have fun at battle.” The other soldier was the “guard knight”—left at home to look after the women and children. “And he’s fed up,” added Tom.

Tom’s father worked away from home several days a week, sometimes for longer. “You are the man of the house now, look after your mum and sisters,” he used to instruct Tom as he left for work. Tom’s picture showed how burdened he felt by this well meaning, but totally impossible request. He was the fed up “guard knight” watching his father ride off to have fun. He had taken on the role of “the sensible one” to please his parents but in adopting this pseudo maturity he was missing out on the joys of being a little boy.

Tom’s club workers realised that they had to respond to him by freeing him from responsibilities in club. Club had to be a place where he could be a carefree child. They realised that because he was so reliable they had fallen into the trap of reinforcing his pseudo maturity by giving him special jobs to do in club.

The sensible child as peacemaker

When eleven year old Josie arrived in club, her playworkers were impressed by her maturity. She was keen and eager to take on responsibilities which she carried out reliably and efficiently. She was also very skilled at intervening as a peacemaker in other children’s rows and conflicts. But several months later, they were worried: at times, Josie seemed over helpful to the point of being irritating. She would follow club workers round asking if they had any jobs she would like to do or repeatedly enquiring whether “I should do this or that.” They also noticed she often tried to divert her playworker when he was managing children’s conflicts, offering her version of events, whether she was involved or not.

Josie’s parents had a volatile relationship, often erupting into violent rows. Josie had taken on the role of peacemaker in the family. Her mother gave a typical example. After a row one evening, she asked Josie to tell her father, “Supper is ready—and has been for ten minutes.” Her father replied tersely, “I heard her the first time . .. tell her I’m on my way.” Josie repeated the message but then provoked an aggressive argument with her younger brother, at which point both parents told her off soundly. We can think of Josie as a child trying to keep the peace between her parents. Unconsciously, she had diverted their conflict from each other onto herself. She would rather her parents were shouting at her than shouting at each other.

Children like Josie may make excellent monitors but may develop a phobic attitude to conflict. They have sacrificed their own needs and desires in order to avoid conflict and may grow up not only as “people pleasers” but also quite terrified of an argument developing in her presence. Josie’s club workers offered her a space to be open about her anxieties and to find healthier ways of managing them. Initially Josie found this difficult and she seemed hurt and rejected when, for example, her explanations of what might have gone on between two other children were firmly but kindly rejected if she had not been involved in the incident. Her club workers would remind her “This is not your problem, Josie, there is no need for you to try and make peace.” However, gradually it became clear that she felt relieved from the heavy burden of always having to mediate in other people’s arguments.

The Scapegoat

Scapegoats are very important people. They help the rest of us to avoid our fears and anxieties. Think about Josie—her parents resolved their own conflict by uniting to scapegoat Josie.

Tim is a twelve year old who found it difficult to make friends. When he did have a friend, there was always conflict. He would try to get his friend to “gang up” with him against others, causing a split in the group. And he did the same with the staff, frequently reporting inaccurately to one playworker that another had given him permission to do something. He was also divisive, for example, telling one staff member that her colleague had complained, “You didn’t make us put the art things away properly.”

This “splitting” is a common phenomenon in children whose parents knowingly draw them into their conflicts. It is, of course, inevitable that all children are drawn into parental conflict at some time or other, but that is a different situation to when parents decide to involve their children. For example, when Tim’s father arrived home too late for his mother to go to her evening class, she said, “Well, Tim was very disappointed you weren’t here to help with his maths, weren’t you, Tim?” inviting Tim to join her in attacking his father. The result was that Tim was growing up with the idea that someone always has to be left out. In club, he worked hard to ensure that it was not him but, of course, his attempts to scapegoat other people tended to leave him isolated.

It was hard work for club workers to help Tim to realise that it was possible to be friends with more than one person at a time. They did so not only by talking with Tim individually but also by having general group discussions on how it felt to be left out and also what it meant to have friends.

The positive scapegoat

Tim’s parents used Tim as ammunition against each other but sometimes families scapegoat one member in a more positive way, such as the “success” of the family. Megan, bright and attractive, was such a child. There seemed to be no area in which she didn’t shine—academia, sport, music. Holiday club began the day after her school’s prize day. Her playworker was surprised to see Megan looking downcast. “Well done, Megan,” she greeted her, “I hear you won four prizes.” To her surprise, Megan burst into tears and eventually explained that whilst she had been pleased to win her prizes, she felt under pressure because, “... now I’ll always have to win.”

We need to be watchful of the successful child because the risk for them is that they may be allowing everyone else to fail! By being the “successful one” in the family, Megan was assuaging her parents’ anxieties about being “good enough” parents; the fantasy being that if one child in the family was doing well, it proved they were succeeding as parents in some way. In another sense, Megan was relieving the pressure on her siblings to succeed. They were more able to take life at their own pace because Megan was successful. The problem for Megan was that she was growing up feeling she was only loveable if she succeeded. It was not that her parents had meant to give her that message but Megan was obviously conscious of how much her success meant to them.

In club, Megan needed reassurance that she was equally as acceptable, whether failing or succeeding. Her club workers tried to focus their praise more on aspects of her personality and qualities than her achievements. Children like Megan may find a great relief in being allowed to fail.

The troublemaker

Troublemakers are also often working very hard for both their family and for club. Remember how Josie “made” trouble to rescue her parents? Chris was a ten year old who was always in trouble, at home and away. His playworkers were relieved on the rare occasions he didn’t attend: “The group is so different when he’s not here, there’s just no trouble at all.” His parents echoed this sentiment at home, “It’s so peaceful when he’s not here,” said his mother.

Children often take on the role of troublemaker in families where there is something difficult and hard to manage creaking away in everyday life. There were huge tensions in Chris’s parents’ marriage. It became easy to call the hard-to-manage thing in the family “Chris”—a persona he carried into club.

“None of the others behave like that,” moaned his play leader. Well, the other children didn’t need to make trouble, because Chris could always be relied on to do it for them. They may have felt equally disgruntled about club rules or activities organised, but they didn’t protest because they knew that Chris would always kick up a fuss.

Troublemakers help us to avoid dealing with our own conflicts. So a child like Chris, often accused of disrupting a group, may actually be looking after the group. Chris needed help to step out of his family role and to fight only the battles that belonged to him.

Club is like home and unlike home. Playworkers are like a parent and unlike a parent. Unconsciously, children are constantly asking, “Is club a good enough substitute for my parents?” and “Is club an interesting new world?” The great advantage of playworkers is that they are not parents. You are new adults who may allow children to experiment with substituting an “acquired personality” for the experience of being an authentic individual with their own thoughts, needs and special things to say.

Growing up: The Primary School Years

Working out where children are on the physical and cognitive continuum can enhance understanding during the pre-teenage years

Both adults and children attach great importance to age in childhood. “How old are you?” is often our opening question. “Seven but I’m nearly eight,” is typical of their telling replies. While adults perceive little difference in a year in their own age dramatic developmental changes take place in a year in a child’s life and no more rapidly than in the club years.

Seven year olds are still very much children preoccupied with school, play and their place in the family. As they approach Year 4 they will increase their steps to independence by taking more interest in the world outside home. They may mimic teenagers, talking about pop stars, discos, love and sex but are equally as likely to believe in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy.

By Year 7 children may be clearly adolescent in their ways and interests. They are much more focussed on life outside the home. However, there will still be marked differences in their behaviour and teen behaviour. For example, at a social gathering they are likely to choose to be with the children, whereas, of course, a teenager would want to be with the adults.

It can be arbitrary to divide children strictly into groups as child development happens in a very broad spectrum, but having a rough idea of where a child is physically and cognitively can help us to understand them as people.

We can also understand what attending club may mean to them. Historically, the club years have always been known as “latency”, a relatively stable, calm period when sexual curiosity goes underground and children are consolidating what they know. However, in this modern era, childhood is changing and this age group is becoming more challenging and turbulent. It is now more realistic to think of latency as the 7–9 year old group and the 9–12 year olds as the “betweenage” stage.

Mood swings and the beginning of puberty

Seven year olds are fine tuning their coordination to master activities such as playing sports and musical instruments. They begin to take a pride in their own skills and abilities and to be aware of how they differ from those of their friends.

Young children describe themselves concretely, e.g., “I’m Marcus and I’m five.” Now they are also more likely to describe their skills and abilities. For example, “I’m Marcus and I’m good at football.”

By nine, they will feel that they know themselves and will feel comfortable and confident in their bodies. All this is about to change with the onset of the betweenage years.

Studies from Great Ormond Street Hospital show that puberty may begin as young as at eight years old for both girls and boys. Sex hormones, especially in girls, begin to increase gradually in the body from about seven years old. Although the levels are not large enough to stimulate physical changes such as breasts or pubic hair developing, they do affect the brain, causing mood swings. Professor Peter Hindmarsh likens the situation for the betweenager as not unlike that for a woman in the first three months of pregnancy, who may feel awful but appears normal and it is not until the pregnancy is showing that she receives the sympathy she needs. Children get their sympathy when symptoms like acne, for example, begin to appear, which is unlikely to be as young as eight or nine years old.

I have highlighted elsewhere (Clifford-Poston, 2005) how by nine years old, children who are still pre-pubertal will be aware of and curious about teenage bodies and all that they signify. We can think of betweenagers as experiencing a crisis of body ambition; what kind of body do I want? What kind of body will I have? How will my body compare with that of my friends?

In contrast to the growing competence and confidence of a seven year old, a betweenager may be struggling with a loss of self-image. Their agile, coordinated, even graceful child bodies are being replaced with ones that are not only awkward and clumsy but also seem alien to them. They may worry about the contrast between their bodies and the glamorous and sexy teenage bodies they see all around them. They may also feel their body doesn’t really belong to them any more and face the dilemma of dressing it up in teenage clothes or returning to comfortable latency by wearing inappropriately child-like outfits or a unisex uniform of tracksuits, jeans and t-shirts.

Working out morality

In the club years, children begin to change the way they think. On the whole, 7–9 years olds tend to live in a black and white world where things are right or wrong, fair or not fair. Their morality and sense of values will be what they have been taught by adults with no shades of grey—one eight year old girl wanted to sell her toys at a boot sale because, “All the children in Africa are dying.”

They tend to take language literally and understand words as they apply to their experience. A seven year old was very perplexed when he saw a sign “Self drive cars.” He had witnessed many arguments between his mother and father as his father complained of his mother “riding the clutch”. He couldn’t understand why his parents had to argue about the driving if cars could drive themselves!

In contrast, betweenagers are beginning to develop the capacity for abstract thought, resulting in them questioning all sorts of issues. A seven year old may help to raise money for victims of the latest crisis but a betweenager will be beginning to think also about the causes of the crisis and man’s part in them; they are beginning to work out their own morality and what they believe in.

They may become fervent about topics such as human suffering or animal welfare and try hard to convert everyone else...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• Part One: Playworkers, Children and Behaviour
• Part Two: Stress and Worry
• Part Three: Just Attention Seeking?
• Part Four: Worrying Behaviour
• Part Five: Special Needs?
• Part Six: The Family and the Outside World
• CONCLUSION: Can Psychoanalytic Insight Really Help a Club Worker?
• FURTHER READING
• REFERENCES
• INDEX