Playground Politics: Understanding the Emotional Life of Your School-Age Child by Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D. with Jacqueline Salmon. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. 1993. 315pp. $12.
By the time we become parents, many of us have been navigating the maze of adult responsibility for so long that we have largely lost our ability to contemplate the world from a child’s perspective. When life is humming along smoothly, this grown-up tunnel vision may not present a problem. However, as our kids wrestle with difficult stages or issues, the ability to see a predicament with childlike eyes may enable us to more effectively support and encourage them, and help us to keep parenting agendas and personal issues from clouding our vision. In any case, it is vital that we work to build an alliance with our children, particularly as they enter elementary school where their world expands dramatically and we find ourselves competing with a growing number of forces for control and influence.
Playground Politics serves as a manual for parents who have children moving through the emotional and social milestones of middle childhood. Common concerns of this period are covered in detail, with topics ranging from aggression, competition and rivalry, to self-esteem and peer relations, a variety of learning challenges, balancing fantasy and reality, sexuality and puberty. Richly illustrated case studies give each theme an intensely human side, providing a lens that allows us to view the realm of childhood experience the way our children do.
Greenspan advocates five basic principles for guiding children through the middle years. First and foremost is “floor time”, an exercise that involves spending thirty minutes of unstructured time every day with your child, time that is crucial, the author believes, for building warmth, trust and communication. As parents, we are challenged to commit to this modest but critical block of daily one-on-one time with our children. An additional challenge lies in following the essential ground rules for “floor time”: to follow your child’s lead and tune into whatever interests him. In other words, directive behavior or suggestions from us are outlawed. If floor time is in place, Greenspan asserts we have laid the foundation for tackling any and all challenges our children face.
Other strategies (problem-solving time, identifying and empathizing with a child’s point of view, breaking challenges into small pieces and setting limits) offer logical ways to approach change. Problem solving time gives families an opportunity to discuss and negotiate differences and difficulties. Children have good reasons for doing what they do, so understanding their rationalizations is essential if we want to influence behavior. Solutions need to be broken down into realistic tasks in order to maximize the chances for initial success, which in turn provides continuing motivation for dealing with a challenge in effective ways. When these techniques are combined with limit setting, children have a strong sense of security and direction. Overall, this sensible, positive approach reassures us and provides a framework for working with challenges as they occur.
Struck by the book’s abundant insights into the private world of elementary school-age children, I devoured it for its wisdom, eager to get a sense of what lay ahead of me with my own family. I was especially drawn to perspectives on teasing and bullying, a recurring, more nuanced issue now that my children are five and eight. Greenspan’s compassionate ability to access children’s hearts and minds comes through loud and clear. Accomplished at empathizing with and understanding why children perpetuate some self-destructive, protective or inhibiting behaviors, he also offers intuitive problem solving skills which give children tools for transcending debilitating behaviors. Perhaps most importantly, he recognizes the significance of the context in which children live and the ways in which the interplay of family dynamics may aid or abet a child’s development. These principles hold true for “the world is my oyster” (5-7), “the world is other kids” (8-10) and “the world is inside me” (10-12) periods. It is unusual to find a source combining such a useful and sensitive “how-to” approach with a profound analysis of what makes children tick.
Stanley Greenspan is clinical professor of psychiatry, behavioral sciences, and pediatrics at the George Washington University Medical School and a practicing child psychiatrist. Dr. Greenspan has been honored with a number of national awards, including the American Psychiatric Associations Ittleson Prize for outstanding contributions to child psychiatric research and the Strecker Award for Outstanding Contributions to American Psychiatry. He is the author of twenty books, including First Feelings: Milestones in the Emotional Development of Your Baby and Child, and The Essential Partnership: How Parents and Children Can Meet the Emotional Challenges of Infancy and Early Childhood.