Scting the part

Andrea Clifford-Poston
Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Playworkers are in a good position to free a child from a restrictive role they have adopted due to their family dynamics, explains Andrea Clifford-Poston 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.