Children’s crying in play conflicts

Abstract

The study examines young children's play and adults' responses to children's peer play conflicts (in preschools in Sweden) that result in crying. It shows how educators' participation in the resolution of children's play conflicts constitutes socialization practices that focus on moral and emotional aspects of children's conduct. Children's crying has previously been investigated primarily from psychological perspectives. Interactional studies have highlighted that children use different communicative resources in their play interactions and conflicts. Crying, however, has not been investigated in an educational context and not in its own right. The present study adopts social interactional and sociocultural perspectives on children's development and learning. The study is based on video ethnography from a Swedish preschool for children aged 1-4 years. The findings demonstrate that young children use crying as a communicative act that invites educators' active response to a moral transgression committed by a peer. The children use crying to position themselves as victims or perpetrators in a conflict that educators are called upon to resolve, while at the same time mediating between children. The analysis shows that children configure their crying as an embodied and publicly visible act to be noticed by educators, whose responses then accomplish the moral framing of play conflict.