Children’s crying in play conflicts: A locus for moral and emotional socialization

The purpose of the study is to further develop the understanding of crying and responses to crying as interactional and sociocultural phenomena in a kindergarten context. The study investigates children’s play and the responses of adults to conflicts in play between children of the same age that result in crying. More specifically, the study is based on the following research questions: (1) what are the social functions of crying in conflicts between children of the same age? (2) how can kindergarten children’s responses to their peers’ crying be understood in relation to institutional norms and values, and the children’s group culture with their peers? (3) what characterises the emotional and moral socialisation potential of kindergarten teachers’ responses to children’s crying? 

The findings of the study show that young children use crying as a communicative action that invites an active response from kindergarten staff to moral transgressions from peers. The crying was addressed by the staff. The children upgraded the remarkableness of their crying by adopting various techniques, such as using breaks, postponing crying, and moving to a location that would be more noticeable to others, especially the staff.

The results of the study show that persistent crying, when employees responded and contributed to conflict resolution, was problematic and was viewed by staff as inappropriate. Since the employees had acknowledged the problem and the conflict that caused the crying, they expected the child to participate in conflict resolution in a proper manner.

In summary, the study shows that the children configure their own crying as a bodily and publicly visible act with the intention of being noticed by the kindergarten staff, whose responses constitute the moral framing of conflict in play.

This study is part of a larger study. The study in question is based on video ethnography conducted in a Swedish kindergarten. The video recordings are made in two different kindergarten groups: a group of children aged 1-3 and a group of children aged 4. In total, the respondents consist of 38 children and 9 kindergarten employees. The majority of the employees were educated kindergarten teachers. The focus group consisted of 5 children who were selected based on their age (18 months to 2 years at the start of the recordings). The video recordings were not limited to just the focus children. Recordings are made of activities that represent typical days in the kindergarten.

Kvist, M. H. (2018). “Children’s crying in play conflicts: A locus for moral and emotional socialization”. Research on Children and Social Interaction, 2(2):153-176.