Posted by Rebecca on 12/19/99 from ant25271-1.gw.connect.com.au:
In Reply to: Re: WAR!- and another thing,,,,,,,,,,, posted by Ian Wright on December 17, 1999 at 18:56:50:
I think Ian's got a point. When I read AR as a child in the 60s and 70s, not one shred of the children's activities struck me as unrealistic, including the more war-like events. My friends and I grew up in the suburbs playing entirely unsupervised in pockets of bush between houses, on empty building sites at weekends, and in the (steep) streets on our bikes without helmets. There was constant conflict, lots of rough and tumble and occasional pain inflicted both deliberately and accidentally. Importantly, there were also rules, arrived at by consensus, beyond which excess violence was unacceptable. Any child who broke these rules had it furiously pointed out to him/her (but nearly always him) and was briefly ostracised from the group as punishment. It was rare to consult adults over conflict. I worry that children who now play supervised by adults don't learn this process of establishing and then upholding social boundaries.