to ask if play fighting is allowed in your school playground?

[worryingunnecessarily]

Have a thread in chat, DS is being hurt each day, he is 5. On observation the boys are engaging in rough play fighting, throwing each other on the floor, jumping on each other. DS is not into this type of play fighting and finds it scary. MDA seems to allow it.

Does your school allow it?

No. Not at all.

Speak to the HT.

No, which is a shame because I'd really like to shout 'bundle' and make sure the mum with the cat's bum mouth is at the bottom.

HTH

No. The playground is very small, and some rougher games are even banned.

Absolutely not, some children seem to really enjoy trying to do it though but someone always ends up getting hurt, most of the time it's a child who hasn't even been part of the game or is just walking past that gets bashed or knocked to the ground.

We split them up as soon as we see it beginning and remind them that we do not play like this as people get hurt.

No...none whatsoever. I have seen some boys doing it near the gates at hometime whilst the parents look on but they're not meant to.

No but rough play is inevitable at this age. What starts out as a simple game of tag or an imaginary superhero game can turn into a bundle really quickly.

Just to buck the trend. It is allowed in our school, but is monitored (supposedly). They even have a soft mat for wrestling on.

The other day ds1 who is in Juniors now came home and said, "I have a weakness in fighting. It is in my stomach. When people punch me, I cant breathe!" . That is going too far, though I know they are a bunch of friends and are not doing it nastily, it is still all 'fun' but obviously not for ds1.

Interested to see how this thread develops. For some kids, play fighting is a way of bonding and most of their games revolve around this, whether it be Star Wars or Transformers, or Ben10, whatever. I am surprised some schools ban it and I think it is managed very well at the Infant school. Possibly the Juniors are not as well supervised as it is a v large playground. Some kids are not the football or sports types, but still need to let off steam at breaks.

By the way, the example you give would not be allowed in the Infants. It is definitely one on one on the wrestling mat. I just think the playground staff need to be able to judge when it is getting out of hand rather than banning it completely.

Interesting. It seems to be generally accepted, I watched for about half an hour. It happened in one area specifically and there was a MDA there.

My plan was to ask them to set some rules for rough play, like stopping if the child is upset or asks them to etc. Maybe I should be asking why its allowed at all? Have an appointment with the teacher later so just trying to gather my thoughts.

depends on the play! we monitor it and intervene if it gets too rough.

if your ds isn't into it then not sure how he is being hurt? are they coming up to him to do it or does he like it until he is hurt? two different things.

in our playground it's the same lads who engage in this while others don't.

merrymarigold that was my initial reaction. Then DS came home in tears again as said 'i just want to feel safe mummy'. He is having issues with 2 boys in particular but I think its a case of them playing differently to him, rather than a bullying issue.

thebody they tend to push him over then jump on him, having watched it seems to be something that happens a lot to children. That sounds worse than it is.

polishthepalace

'i just want to feel safe mummy'.

Did he use those exact words? If he did, then there has been talk from the teachers about this- those are "ofsted" words.

Which might mean there have been other complaints, or that the school recognises it as a problem and is trying to address it.

yep those words, I thought that too (work in early years), although he is fairly articulate and its not out of the ordinary for him to have a grown up way when talking smart arse

If I were you, I would ask there to be rules which the playground staff are aware of, rather than banning it. I think a) they are unlikely to ban it because you want it banned and b) you will just come across as naive.

But some good rules which people know how to enforce such as it always needs to be one on one. Or, you ask ds to go and play something with someone who is not fighting. Even at this age, they need to start being able to say, "I don't want to join in."

No, not permitted (I think because staff don't want to be forever refereeing what is acceptable or not). There's plenty of scope for other boisterous games for those that want to be active, and they allow others considered 'rough' such as Bulldog.

It's definitely asking what the rules are in your playground, and pointing out that your DS is unhappy but unable to withdraw effectively. At such a young age, discreet surveillance and intervention is appropriate.

merrymarigold that is exactly what I will do. Have already told DS to say he doesn't want play and walk away, will keep reinforcing.

It is allowed, I think, as long as it's non contact, if that makes sense. So they will do lots of moves, but not actually touch, which can be quite funny to watch!

The problem often comes when there is a slightly nervous child watching on the sidelines. Because they are watching they don't touch the children who are playing, but a child watching isn't always in their sight, and sometimes they are accidently hit during a move, which is carefully controlled not to touch their fellow playfighter.
Because the watcher is usually watching because they don't want to join in, it becomes a bigger issue to them that they have been hit, if that makes sense.

So the MDS try to keep those who are engaged in the play fighting separate.

Not allowed in our school.

We have loads of toys out at play/ lunch time and staff are expected to engage with and play with children at all times. Rather than walk around with cups of tea and chat! (I saw this all the time when on placement!)

Having the toys and actually engaging in play made a massive difference to the number of outdoor 'incidents'. Sounds obvious but lots of schools don't do it.

There are no toys or games out at all. It is a large school and about half the school out at a time approx 200. Think playground supervision, and how incidents are reported back to class teachers needs to be my discussion points.

I work in a school at lunch times and in my sons (different) school there is no play fighting allowed whatsoever.

Depends how rough, a bit of pushing and pretending is ok if everyone is happy and it is quite gentle

If it's a fight, or a child is unhappy or it's too rough then it's stopped as soon as it's known about

They do err on the side of caution though, anything that looks vaguely rough is stopped