In this chapter, the author addresses the issue of play, questioning the role it plays in the life and development of the child and if it can be a promoter of well-being and resilience when children are faced with adverse situations. Play in its various forms of expression is not just a pastime or a waste of time; it is a vital element of childhood that fosters development and should be promoted in all circumstances, even where living conditions are particularly difficult and hostile. It is therefore legitimate to ask oneself about the importance of promoting play and recreational activities in hospitals, that is, in those places that by their very function manage illness and the suffering it entails. Helping young people cope with the hardships brought about by a stay in hospital means drawing attention to the fact that whatever the outcome, before being a patient, a child is always a child, where their right to well-being is seen as not only the “absence of disease or infirmity” but as “a state of total physical, mental, and social well-being.”
TopIntroduction
Throughout history, children have been exposed to difficult events and, due to a lack of rights, they were subject to the circumstances of the environment in which they were born and grew up. Children have long been considered the property of their families, and childhood has long been considered as a period of life that characterized the child more as a failed adult than as a being in formation, with their own characteristics and needs (Becchi & Julia, 1996; Cunningham, 1997).
It can be argued that it was in 1900, thanks in part to the studies in the field of psychology and pedagogy, that there was an effort to study and understand childhood. This led to knowledge and understanding of the surprising transformation that takes place in human beings at the cognitive and emotional levels, so much so that the needs and potentialities of children came to the fore, as well as their need to be granted both dignity and human rights.
Interest in the right to protect children from adverse situations also arose. Importantly, a severe event such as World War II and the disasters it evoked played a key role in early research on risk and resilience (Masten, 2014; Masten & Narayan, 2012) and experts from a variety of disciplines were called upon to help and study children who had been affected by adverse conditions. Many studies have subsequently been conducted to further understand which factors encourage resilience even in catastrophic situations, focusing on personal and contextual factors. Examples of “positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity” (Luthar et al., 2000, p. 543) were described as “resilience” phenomena by researchers who studied good outcomes in high-risk children, sustained competence in children under stress, and recovery from trauma (Masten et al., 1990; Masten & Narayan, 2012).
Over the past decades, childhood development has been studied not only with a focus on the child, but within a framework that considers the interactions between individuals and their contexts, at multiple levels of functioning from the micro- to the macro-level systems of culture, society, and ecology (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).
To introduce this chapter, the author proposes an interesting work by George Eisen (1988), entitled Children and Play in the Holocaust. The book chronicles children’s play during the Holocaust and invites the readers to think about the general explanation for play under adverse circumstances, such as the stressful conditions of war. The thesis is that children’s play is an instinctual activity carried on even under extreme conditions. The author writes:
“My theme deals primarily with experiences in the Holocaust, but the study offers also a certain universality, for it addresses as well the basic theorem of play under adverse circumstances, under stress, and under inhuman conditions, the condition of children in war”. (p. 4)
Eisen describes children playing at the portals of the gas chambers, and tells of games such as “tickle the corpse” or “breaking into the hiding place,” and “massacre in Ponary.” These games represent suffering and death, reenacting the atrocities the children witnessed, and it is evident that this type of play breaks with the idea of play as something born of levity or frivolous in nature.
Play often reflects reality and, as the author writes:
“Perhaps the most mystifying thing about play is that, on the one hand, it is supposed to be disengaged from reality in a variety of ways, while, at the same time, it is credited with a great number of useful real-life functions”. (p. 5)
Eisen often cites the seriousness inherent in play. Further, the role this activity takes on in hostile circumstances becomes the element of analysis, an element that questions “one of the mysteries of this tragic epoch was that the children played (if only for a fleeting moment), dreamed of freedom, and tried to understand a hostile world where the most frightening element of the irrational was its rationality” (p. 7).
Even today, many situations make children’s lives stressful and require social attention. These could include illness or trauma, events that force a child/young person to face a period of hospitalization, a condition that presents itself as new to a child/young person and that forces them to leave their parents, siblings, and home (Burns-Nader & Hernandez-Reif, 2016; Delvecchio et al., 2019). At the same time, they have to deal with medical examinations, pain, loss of control, and safeness, situations that generate insecurity (Capurso, 2001). It is helpful to support children in approaching medical situations with a sense of comfort, achievement, and control.