Scting the part

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, for example, the clever one, the pretty one, and so on. Children may absorb their family role as an identity.

And children bring their family role to club life. They may behave in club in the way they behave at home. 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. Children at a 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 the club to offer the child an alternative way of being themselves.