Stories about playing small houses in a pandemic: between families and public policies

Abstract

As a result of COVID 19 and the provision of social isolation, the family became the exclusive space for interactions for children. We ask how families and institutions dedicated to child care lived this transformation of daily experience and we investigate how the accompaniment functions were developed. First, we carried out exploratory work that lasted during March and April 2020, using cell phone devices to contact children through the adults in charge of their care in the families. We collected audios, videos, and photos of five boys between the ages of 1 and 7 and nine girls between the ages of 1 and 8. We identified the construction of houses as a recurrent game. This game makes it possible to process experiences that are incomprehensible or traumatic, traits of the experience of isolation and social distancing. In the analysis of the records, we problematized adult availability as an enabler of stories that mobilize this type of games. For this we recover contributions from Psychosemiotics, Psychomotricity and Psychology. In the second stage of the research, we investigated how the accompaniment functions were sustained from public policies, considering the case of the Programa de Centros Infantiles de Gestión Directa (Ministerio de Desarrollo Social, Córdoba, Argentina). Based on the above, we discuss possible contributions to the definition of public policies aimed at children, which allow recognizing and enabling better conditions for the deployment of this type of game.