Rescuing Our Traditional Games

These should be part of the child from birth; through them they can develop their skills

Written by Carlos Heredia Reyes

Besides being pleasing, games are necessary for the cognitive (emotional) and affective (intellectual) development in children. Being a spontaneous and free activity, it promotes creativity and fosters maturity.

However, sometimes, we believe that “playing for playing sake” is a waste of time and it would be more profitable to take advantage of every opportunity to learn something useful. We ignore that through play activities infants begin to understand how things work, what we may or may not do with them, they discover that there are rules of causality, probability and behaviour that should be accepted if they want to play with others.

Experts say that if you want to know children – their conscious and unconscious world- you need to understand their games; watching them we find their evolutionary acquisitions, their concerns, their fears, needs and wants which they cannot express in words and find out through play.

Sometimes certain difficulties, which may seem insurmountable for the child, can be met in this way, if their mode of addressing and raising one by one the aspects of the problem.

The game is necessary for intellectual, emotional and social development, allowing three basic functions of psychic development: assimilation, comprehension and adaptation of the external reality; it gives the child the required time and favourable means so it can make its own way, and promotes social communication.

Some experts see it as a preparation for adulthood; and as exploratory behaviour promoting the creation of fields of action and creativity; It has a sense for the child when he is interrupted in any game he is deprived of the outcome of an argument created by himself with a purpose, which we cannot always understand.

In childhood it is the main language of the youngest of the house; they communicate with the world through play. This always makes sense, according to their experience and needs, it shows the path to the inner life of children; they express their desires, fantasies, fears and conflicts through play which symbolically reflects the perception of themselves, others and the world around them; They deal with its past and present, are prepared for the future, and it stimulates all the senses.

It also enhances creativity and imagination, it helps to use physical and mental energy production and / or entertaining ways to remember the lessons learned when having fun, facilitates the development of physical skills, storytelling and jokes, such as social skills to cooperate, negotiate, compete, following rules, taking turns, and rational intelligence to compare, categorize, count, memorize and emotional in terms of self-esteem, sharing feelings with others.

In line with this it is said that traditional games are a source of transmission of knowledge, traditions and cultures of the past. Reactivating the fact is not a cry of melancholy for a past that will not return, but involves delving into the roots and thus better understanding the present.

Unfortunately in Cuba they have been disappearing. These were historically the greatest pastimes of children in fields and cities, and many believe that the technological era and of “digital natives,” is responsible for these losses.

According to a work by colleague Vladia Rubio, published in the online portal CubaSí, anthropologist Rodrigo Espina is one of the scholars that has abounded in this topic. Much investigation on traditional children’s games in particular backs up that “these have disappeared almost entirely from recreational activity and from the knowledge of children and from the cohorts of youth and adults that precede them in today’s Cuba.”

This was a statement made in June 2013, during his speech at the First National Symposium of Cultural Research, organized by the Juan Marinello Cuban Institute Cultural Research. From then to date, there appears to have been no change for the better in the picture.

When José Martí wrote in 1889 for The Golden Age “… children play now just like children before …” he could not imagine the overwhelming thrust technology would print on all life on the planet, and particularly digital.

Almost no one doubts that these digital items are the preference of the younger generation today. But are perhaps not available to most Cuban families?

It also happens that sometimes even to buy a worthwhile glove, a bat and a ball, the family has to pay an insane amount, most choose to save for other priorities like feeding, grooming or children’s footwear.

Master of Science in Education, Matilde Dominguez ensures that young people today tend to socialize less and in a very different way than they did before in schools. “They talk less and themes are increasingly scarce,” describes the educator.

She also spelled out that one of the causes may be “lack of interaction in their games as modern pastimes lead them to be more individualistic and less to sharing.”

“It is sad to see how traditions are lost, not only by the level of entertainment they provide, but on the physical and mental benefits they provide,” says the interviewee.

Not a few psychologists, sociologists and educators insist on the preservation of traditional games in the recesses, in the rescue of customs, which were once held daily and popular in every school in Cuba.

Such actions constitute elements or local identity seals of each neighbourhood, community, town or city. Besides distinguishing us culturally, they become a felt need a social, spiritual and community type, especially for the benefit of the greatest treasure: our children.

Translated by ESTI