Let’s play again! (1991)

“Let’s start playing again” wants to be an invitation, an opportunity for reflection and thinking to rediscover the value of play as a tool for growth, maturation and prevention. It is an occasion to ask ourselves how attentive our society is to a culture of play, understood as a space of gratuitousness, vitality, fantasy, creativity and cooperation.

“Don’t be a child!” is a phrase that is often echoed today among the reproaches and warnings of parents. Children stripped of their childishness and asked to behave like miniature adults. These children are seen as objects, or rather as the objects of maximum desire and childhood as a large market to sell goods for consumption.

Yet, our society has placed the child at the centre of attention, which turns into astonishment, indignation and shock every time the commonplace of a happy childhood shatters in the face of the harsh reality of the violence, mistreatment and abuse suffered by minors. Moreover, the rapid changes that have affected the family, the school, and the most important educational agencies (the Church and today also the media) have violently and overwhelmingly invested in the world of childhood. As a result, values, reference models, needs and the very role of the child have changed. All this is particularly significant in the large metropolitan areas where the quality of life is deteriorating and where the family – just as it is structured and operates in most of our socio-cultural context – have to face increasingly complex difficulties.

Family, school and leisure time are the child’s areas of development. These must be integrated and interact dynamically to ensure that the right to a better quality of life is guaranteed and that concrete, non-contradictory and partial answers can be given to children’s needs by creating spaces and opportunities capable of welcoming children so that they can freely express their abilities, their autonomy and their inner selves.