The word chthonic popped into me social media feed as a “word of the day” kind of thing and my mind turned to this idea of the play children engage in that adults don’t like.
Maybe there are three realms of play according to how the normative adult judges them.
The underworld, earth and the overworld.
Overworld play is that play that get romanticised and frequently shared with others as play goals. In ancient Greek ouranic is the word used to refer to the celestial deities of the overworld - in the same way that chthonic refers to the subterranean deities.
Earth play is the everyday play moments that don’t get noticed or are ignored because they don’t appear to have the same play value as overworld play. This could also connect to infraplay - “infrasound - sound that is there but beyond our human capacity to hear, and it made me think of play, and how that maybe there is play that children engage in that is beyond the ability of adults to notice?”
Underworld play is, as I mentioned, the kind of play many adults try to suppress, limit and deem as “bad”.
This post is a statement - play is play. All of the above is play, all of it is equally important and fixating on creating spaces for overworld (ouranic) play is unhelpful - especially if it is adults that are making decisions as to what is classified as overworld (chthonic) play.
Frequently chthonic play gets labelled as behaviour, as a way to control it, limit it and change it into something more celestial.
Play flow happens in all three realms of this play cosmos - despite the fact that many seem to assume that ouranic play is where flow happens. This means children’s play flow is either disturbed through lack of understanding - either that observing adults fear it is chthonic play (which they feel reflects badly on them) or they fail to notice the everyday play and clumsily trample into a flow with devastating effects and then fail to understand the reaction of the children.
Now I need to reflect myself - but these were my thoughts of the day
If you were to classify play (from the normative view of play) in the play cosmos of chthonic, earth and ouranic - what play experiences would you place under each of these headings? (use the comments function please)
the pay function is now switched back on again - as my birthday month has come to a close. Payment is not needed to access my musings on play, childhood and pedagogy - but those who do I am grateful for, and I will be providing some little extras as a thank you.
thank you for responding to my comment and I like your additional thoughts. I am recent to my awareness of you and your philosophical ponderings and appreciate the way you think deeply. Logophile that I am, I also how you appreciate, consider and use words - when you used 'recombobulate' it struck such a cord. My mother used to say that she was "feeling discombobulated" and I loved how it sounded, such a burbly word, and knew that she meant she felt off kilter. I never heard it used anywhere else and did not give it much thought until your use 'recombobulate' (as happens when in the flow) both orally and in writing which led me to look deeper at the root of these words, to discover that they are of the pseudo-Latinate fanciful 19th century American word coinages. You take me down paths I enjoy! With gratitude, Mary Lou
I am reminded specifically of 2 children who exhibited what would be chthonic play and how the attentiveness of the adults around them allowed that play to be healthy or unhealthy. In the first case a 4-year-old child was standing on the edge of a platform on a climbing structure and claiming that he was going to jump and kill himself. Without context for this declaration, I was deeply concerned for the mental health of this child. In deeper investigation with both the child and his parents I learned that he, had listened to an audio recording of Les Miserables with his parents, including discussions of the story, and was imitating Javert on the bridge, preparing to jump. The second case was another 4-year-old whose play involved, among other themes that were quite dark, constructing gatling guns out of large blocks and shooting all of the children and adults around him. Again, my concern was heightened. Inquiries with his parents revealed that he had been permitted to watch Youtube videos without any oversight and had been algorithmically led into content that was developmentally inappropriate, especially without supportive guidance to help understand that to which he had been exposed. The Javert child was reenacting a story for which he had some level of contextual understanding and was exploring for himself. Gatlin child was reenacting content for which he had only his own self to digest and turned it to expressions of violence against others. What I am noticing mostly about these two examples is the level of guidance offered by the adults in these two children's lives: how one family was completely engaged and helped the child understand and safely explore the dark and the other family was essentially unaware of what their child was integrating and how it turned into rage against the world.
So, to your original question - I do think that thinking about play in these three realms can help break down normative ideas of play, yet they do overlap. Magical play, unicorns, fairies, superheroes, etc., are in the realm of 'ouranic play'. Play that involves real life experiences, whether they be social play explorations, science/nature play, etc. fall under 'earth play'. Play that is also magical though may be perceived as sinister (devils, trolls, etc.) is of the chthonic expression. the lines between these types of play blur and sometimes overlap, depending on understanding and knowledge.