INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND INTERPLAY IN NURSERY SCHOOL: PLAYING AND THE BABY’S PSYCHIC CONSTITUTION

ABSTRACT

The article addresses intersubjectivity, highlighting one of its indicators, interplay, in order to reflect about the importance of playful constructions between adults and small children in psychic development. The skit chosen for analysis was extracted from diaries constructed from observations-interventions in a nursery class, in order to investigate the potency of playful interaction in the pair: adult and baby. The permanence of babies in nursery school makes professionals monitor many acquisitions in the baby’s development. In this way, the results indicate that the presence of the adult in the play scene allows new experiments for the baby, which can be a support in their psychic development.

Keywords:
intersubjectivity; play; child day care

RESUMO

O artigo aborda a intersubjetividade, com destaque para um de seus indicadores, a interludicidade, a fim de pensar a importância das construções lúdicas entre o adulto e a pequena criança no desenvolvimento psíquico. O esquete escolhido para análise foi extraído de diários construídos a partir de observações-intervenções em uma turma de berçário, a fim de investigar a potência da interação lúdica na dupla: adulto e bebê. A permanência dos bebês na creche faz com que os profissionais acompanhem muitas aquisições no desenvolvimento do bebê. Dessa forma, os resultados apontam que a presença do adulto na cena do brincar possibilita novas experimentações ao bebê, as quais podem ser suporte para o seu desenvolvimento psíquico.

Palavras-chave:
intersubjetividade; brincar; creches

RESUMEN

En el artículo se aborda la intersubjetividad, con hincapié para uno de sus indicadores, la Inter claridade, con la finalidad de pensar la importancia de las construcciones lúdicas entre el adulto y el pequeño niño, en el desarrollo psíquico. La encuesta elegida para análisis se extrae de diarios construidos a partir de observaciones-intervenciones en un grupo de guardería, con la finalidad de investigar la potencia de la interacción lúdica en la pareja: adulto y bebé. La permanencia de los bebés en la guardería hace con que los profesionales acompañen muchas adquisiciones en el desarrollo del bebé. De esta manera, los resultados apuntan que la presencia del adulto en la escena del jugar posibilita nuevas experimentaciones al bebé, las cuales pueden ser soporte en su desarrollo psíquico.

Palabras clave:
intersubjetividad; jugar; guardería

INTRODUCTION

The idea of intersubjectivity provides a basis for thinking about the baby’s psychic development based on the relationship with another person. We pay attention to the relationship among professionals and babies in the day care center and direct our gaze to the indicator of intersubjectivity, called interplay, that is, to the playful co-constructions between the adult and the baby, in order to reflect about the importance of these moments for the baby from observations-interventions in a nursery class. This writing is derived from the dissertation entitled “Intersubjetividade e interludicidade na escola de Educação Infantil: encontros e desencontros entre educadora e bebꔲ, by the first author guided by the second one and carried out in the Postgraduate Program in Psychoanalysis: Clinic and Culture, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Theories within psychology and psychoanalysis take as undeniable the importance of the baby and caregiver relationship for the structuring of a psychic subject in the baby. The interpersonal relationship between the baby and its caregiver is highlighted as the foundation of the notion of self and other psychic, a differentiation that the baby begins to organize during the first months of life.

The baby, between the second and sixth month of life, feels that he and the mother are physically separated, are different agents, have “distinct and separate active experiences” (Stern, 1992, p. 21). The aforementioned author builds this idea of relationships “between subjectivities”, movements that take place outside of consciousness and without being verbally expressed, which enable the affective development of the baby. These experiences comprise actions referring to the sharing of “joint attention, intentions and affective states” (Stern, 1992, p. 115).

The Uruguayan author and psychoanalyst Victor Guerra, who has clinical experience in the care of children, produced interesting material on intersubjectivity and established links with psychoanalysis. Child emotional development is understood as composed of co-constructions between baby and adult, which are responsible for the construction of the self and the baby’s relationship with the world (Guerra, 2009).

Guerra (2014a) is similar to Stern (1992), when he states that the expression of intersubjectivity has codes of non-verbal communication, being composed of rhythms, voice intonation, looking in the mirror, imitation and empathy, elements that make up a special communication and make it possible, little by little, to discover the desires of the human being. From these moments of discovery, it is possible to share emotional states. This experience of “being with”, “knowing about” and “participating in” is part of the exchanges through a universal language, which Guerra (2009) gives the name intersubjectivity. Such encounters enable knowledge about the emotional state of this other person who is different from themselves, which have the plurality of elements of this interaction based on empathy and the rhythm between the baby and the caregiver (Guerra, 2014a).

Accompanying oneself and letting oneself be accompanied requires this production of singular and inaugural codes within a duo, a construction based on the experience of the adult and on the possibility of the baby to remain interested in these discoveries. Guerra (2014a) calls this construction “parental music” which will have a main melody in its register, which will be the hallmark of these intersubjective constructions.

Guerra (2009, 2014a, 2014b) built intersubjectivity indicators, which include the baby’s development from zero to 24 months. These indicators give visibility to the young child’s psychic co-constructions and the adult’s role in them. The author lists fifteen indicators and their age groups; they are: meeting eyes (0-2 months); proto-conversations and face-to-face games (2 months); imitation role³; tickle and suspense games (3 - 5 months); attentional vocations (5 - 12 months); referential look and displacement in space (5 - 8 months); joint attention and tutor object (6 - 9 months); hide and seek game (8 months); affective attunement (9 -12 months); interplay (8 -12 months); proto-declarative signaling (12 months); onset of gait and the near-far dialectic (12 - 18 months); reflective awareness (18 months); delayed imitation games (18 - 24 months) and “make-believe” play and language (24 months).

The interplay indicator is the guiding thread for thinking about playful co-constructions. From the age of eight months, the baby is already able to identify the adult as someone with whom he can share actions with goals. A new form of relationship with the other is inaugurated: the adult as his partner in playing. The playful co-constructions begin with implicit and flexible rules, expressed through rhythm, attention, imitation and narrative. Over the baby’s months, the scene is no longer specifically corporeal, but also adds elements of the mental plane (Guerra, 2014b), making the word play a fundamental role in the playful experience. Guerra (2014b) refers to the construction of a transitional space in these situations, bringing the concept of Winnicott (1951/2000) to evidence the elaboration made by adult and baby, that is, the production of a dialogue that allows emotional sharing during intersubjective and interplay experiences.

The baby and the adult co-construct an arduous and complex subjective journey until reaching the ability to use words for communication. The author’s production of Vitor Guerra makes evident how much we use the body and games before building language with words as a source of expression. In Early Childhood Education, children live with professionals from a few months of age and each one has a language: the baby uses the body and few sounds and the adult uses words. Identifying an intersection in this pair requires investment from the subjects involved. The game can become this meeting point. It is the constituent activity of the baby’s psychic development, consequently, it consists of subjective experiences and communication.

CAREGIVERS AT THE DAYCARE

Freud brought, in two of his letters⁴ addressed to Fliess (Freud, 1887-1904/1986), the presence of another caregiver, who was not part of the family, his nanny, referring to her significant role in his family history life and making us think about the importance of these other subjects in the child’s psychic development process.

Bernardino (2009) approaches the subject from the reflection about pluralized caregivers, pointing out other caregivers besides the family, who are part of contemporary childhood. The babies’ early contact with the social world produces a reflection on how this small subject can deal with new images and new relationships.

Thus, in Brazil, since the 19th century, babies have also inhabited the Early Childhood Education school from their first months of life, living with educators, coordinators and other professionals (Kuhlmann Jr., 2000). The social world opens up some daily relationships for the baby in the daycare, the adult-caregiver directs the routine, the baby’s body and provides learning possibilities. This daycare professional inscribes the child in the social bond and in the culture - transition between the private and the public world (Barbosa, 2018). Previous studies (Mariotto, 2019; Bridon, 2019) to our research pointed to relevant results about the interaction in the day care environment and its reverberations on the subjectivity of babies, among others, the relevance of the active posture of caregivers for the development of babies.

Playing is a form of interaction, expression of meanings, a way of elaboration built by children, based on the marks of the encounter with this caregiver (Barbosa, 2018). In the possibility of being together, baby and educator produce exchanges and subjective displacements, being able to make an assembly of the relationship, both in an active way and each with their difficulties and potentialities, that is, their differences, trying to find a paced walk.

Why is it important to think about the playing for the subjectivity construction?

The term ludic helps in reflection, it originates from the Latin ludos, which refers to games, the act of playing and fun (Michaelis, 2019). Playful activities are taken as tools in the childhood psychoanalytic clinic. The child uses play materials as a way of talking about themselves and their conflicts. The setting has toys, children’s books and drawing materials, however there is an effort to work on the analysis of children and not for fun. Rodulfo (1990) states that playing has variants and transformations in its functions during psychic structuring and there is no significant activity in the development of symbolization that does not go through ludic activities.

Freud (1920/1996) brings the observation of his grandson’s game, which he named Fort da. The observed boy, who was one year and eight months old, made sounds that resembled the German words fort and da. As he threw his spool out of his sight, he spoke in German “fort” which means “to go” and the moment he pulled it back he would pronounce “da” which means “here”. This playful construction of the boy revealed his experiments and psychic constructions. The spool game illustrates the subject’s response to the mother’s absence. The object that falls is the subject’s own loss, thus experienced by the alternation of the object (Freud, 1920/1996), experiencing the process of the mother’s presence and absence and the possibility of supporting the lack spaces. Thus, Freud’s production (1920/1996) articulates playful demonstrations and the child’s psychic development.

In play, the body and words are on the scene, elements that communicate unconscious constructions. Winnicott (1975) also brings in his work the idea of ​​playing as a ‘doing’, that is, for the child to control what is outside, it is not enough to simply think or wish, it is necessary to ‘do things’. A movement of doing, created within a potential space (Winnicott, 1975) between mother and baby, in which the baby’s trust in the mother allows him to enjoy playing due to his conquered omnipotence.

Playing together, the adult in the scene with the child, refers to the concept of intersubjectivity: the encounter between subjectivities that co-construct a unique form of interaction from the meeting of two subjects, emphasizing the mobilization of unconscious contents in this partnership. In this way, playing enables a dual relationship that can occur in the presence of real or imaginary interlocutors.

The playful is highlighted from the interaction between the baby and the adult in several indicators of intersubjectivity (Guerra, 2009/2014b), as in the game of tickling and suspense, interplay and “make-believe” games. However, in all indicators, Guerra (2009, 2014a and 2014b) highlights the difference in tone of voice as a way for the adult to respond and interact with the child, a playful way of presenting the world to the baby. Plays with some structure appear to permeate affective development indicators from the age of three months and do not depart over time; on the contrary, playfulness takes on more complex forms and plays an important role in the process of the baby’s symbolic constitution.

Golse (2003) states that, in addition to the malleability of the other, the narrative is a necessary condition for babies’ relational play. The narrative will only be possible when shared pleasure affects in the triad (baby, caregiver and object), that is:

The adult’s story only makes sense for the child if the reporting adult experiences pleasure in his activity as a narrator, and it is only in the midst of such an emotional climate that the child and the adult will be able to play reporting, playing with the narration, with its twists and turns. (Golse, 2003, p. 48).

The baby’s structuring encounters from the perspective of intersubjectivity have the caregiver’s adaptation to the baby’s rhythm and the co-creations of a common rhythm. The transformations of the baby’s affective experiences and the opening to the word and to the game are bases of the symbolization process, resulting from the care presence process (Guerra, 2013). The presence of the caregiver allows the baby to be supplied with metaphors to lead the production of their representations that will be at the service of the drive circuit.

We can think of the baby’s playful constructions as the ‘doing’ that indicates the path of their psychic elaborations and a possibility for the adult to approach this psychic narrative that the small child makes of himself and his conflicts. In this sense, playful co-constructions are essential during the baby’s development, carried out by the baby’s active posture in the interaction and by the adult’s condition of reading the baby’s manifestations. How to think about playful in the Early Childhood Education scenario?

Directed or free games are part of the educator’s work schedule with children in the Kindergarten school. Games in the context of early childhood education, help in the relationships and interactions between children and in their cognitive formation, stimulating knowledge and the desire to learn (Barcelos & Mendes, 2009). Playfulness is seen as an activity to enrich the cognitive repertoire, allowing the child to follow the contents determined in each school year (Kishimoto, 2017).

Fortuna (2000) highlights this complex way of articulating education using the tools of ludic activities, as differences are found between playing and educating at school. The author refers to playing as a free and spontaneous activity while teaching is a directed activity; thus, it becomes difficult to play that adopts educational purposes. However, the aforementioned author highlights characteristics of play, seeing it as the experimentation of roles that go beyond the child’s real age, the experimentation of operating from cultural values ​​present in the game and the appropriation of the world in an active and direct way through of this. These elements that the child can live and be, in the time of the game, point to constructions of instruments of interaction through the fantasy and the language of the game. In this way, play becomes analogous to learning (Fortuna, 2000).

The expansion of the idea about playing, one that goes beyond the objective of educating, allows us to perceive the child’s forms of communication:

The child expresses himself in many ways, and one of them is through play. These moments are unique and allow them to demonstrate their feelings, their reality, their interests and disinterests, their abilities and skills. The ludic is an instrument, a pedagogical possibility, where the student, when participating in pleasant moments, acquires many values ​​that will reflect on their way of thinking and acting, thus stimulating the child’s social life. (Arantes & Barbosa, 2017, p. 104).

The author Vygotsky contributes theorizing about education and recreational activities:

Playful activities are important tools not only for the child’s cognitive development, but also for their social and affective development, enhancing the ability to learn by socializing with others, given that they are subjects in continuous training. The child in play learns to be a conscious adult, able to participate and engage in the life of his community (Vygotsky, 1994, pp. 82-83).

It is interesting to see how, in productions that are in the area of ​​pedagogy, playing appears as a tool for listening to children and not just for learning didactic content. For this experimentation of play to occur, there must also be conditions of the physical environment (Kishimoto, 2017). This author points out the importance of toys or objects being within reach of children, enabling autonomy in choosing objects to play with. Thus, the room setting can help the reproduction of everyday scenes and creative scenes between children and between children and adults.

Taking the idea of ​​toys availability and playing time at school, we emphasize another element - the interaction of children and adults:

The importance of playing, extolling its free dimension, does not mean that free play is free of adult participation, and particularly in the context of Early Childhood Education, of the educator. Now, free and quality play within the classroom of Early Childhood Education institutions presupposes precisely conditions that only an educator, aware of the importance of this activity, can provide. (Barbosa & Fortuna 2015, p. 19).

Playing and being accompanied are of great importance when we think about child development, they are even contemplated in public policies⁵ that point to children’s rights, but this composition is extremely challenging in the routine of caregivers in the Kindergarten School. The challenge is to contemplate the unique playful interaction with the babies and to compose with the other routine activities and the bureaucracy of the institution. Fortuna (2000) defines playing in the classroom as a bet for adults, who can support the circulation of metalanguage in their daily work and accept to act based on a concept of pleasurable and creative work, allowing themselves to play with children and being able to conciliate the pedagogical objectives with the wishes of the students. The author marks the possibility of using play as a resource in the classroom, evidencing a necessary displacement of the adult to work with language that goes beyond the field of words.

Mariotto (2009) emphasizes that, in the environment of the Early Childhood Education school, playing can be in all routine activities: eating, bathing, before bed, actions with toys, among others. The author also puts on the role of the caregiver in day care:

Participation in playful moments is not limited to just observing the activity of babies around the objects and toys available. It requires an active, significant participation, that is, capable of translating the baby’s action into words, allowing him to symbolically construct and imaginatively enact his representations of the world and of himself. The field of Early Childhood Education is prohibited from positioning itself in a distant place, alien to the function of playing and so little committed to desire and pleasure. (Mariotto, 2009, p. 143).

The term playful does not appear in productions in the field of education. It evokes the mark of the co-constructions between baby and adult during psychic development since the baby, which are placed in the field of psychology and psychoanalysis. The analysis of the scene proposed for reflection, precisely, tries to set up this field of dialogue between psychoanalysis and Early Childhood Education.

METHOD

The research cut chosen for analysis is derived from observations-interventions carried out by two researchers in an Early Childhood Education school belonging to the Porto Alegre/RS City Hall network. The researchers participated for a semester in the morning shift routine of a nursery class 2⁶, composed of ten babies aged 1 year and 6 months to 2 years and 6 months. The class had a head teacher and an assistant teacher to accompany the children.

The term observation-intervention indicates the researchers’ attitude, because in addition to observing the babies, they also intervened, playing with the children in the classroom and establishing dialogues with the school professionals. In this way, the researcher is taken as a subject to be considered in research and analysis, his subjectivity is part of the scene and also changes it (Silva, 2013). After each shift at school, we reported, in the form of a diary, the scenes seen and experienced. We chose a sequence of facts from the observation-intervention in full in order to keep the course of interactions between children and adults. The names of children and school professionals have been changed in order to preserve the identity of the people involved. The analysis of the co-constructions between the child and the adult, in the context of the day care center, considers some elements: the baby’s posture, the adults’ posture and the institutional characteristics. The following skit helps to reflect on the importance of playful co-constructions in the school environment:

“The coordinator of Early Childhood Education, named Carla, enters the room to monitor the adaptation of a boy. The educators begin to organize the children to carry out a task with ink. The auxiliary educator, Lu, says ‘I want to see Janaína do the homework’ and I say ‘how are you going to do it with her?’, the head educator, Jaqueline says ‘she will do it too!’. I take the opportunity and tell Carla, who is attentive to the conversation, ‘I thought Janaína was super rigid the last time we came, she didn’t want to paint and always asked to be held when she was annoyed’. At this moment, I call Lu to participate in the conversation and say, ‘Lu, you told me that she didn’t want to move the soil, you know, to plant the beans’ and Lu said, ‘no, she doesn’t like these things to get dirty’. Carla says ‘girls (reporting to Jaqueline and Lu), you have to talk to her mother, her mother must be cleaning her all the time, I used to do that with my daughter, until Dunia (EP/PI advisor⁷) did the listening and I stopped cleaning all the time’. Lu puts Janaína’s blouse on and she starts crying and Carla says ‘if she doesn’t want to, let her’. Janaína walks to my lap and sits down, Carla takes the cap from the paint pot and shows Janaína ‘look Janaína, I’m going to make a heart on Lu’. Then I say ‘I want a butterfly too’. Carla makes me a flower and I say ‘Carla, do you want a drawing too?’ she says ‘yes’ and I paint her hand. My fellow researcher, named Antônia, says ‘I want a drawing too!’. When we saw it, the children were around us, asking for a drawing in their hands, and then we made balls in their hands. The first time Carla offers Janaína to make a drawing using ink, she says ‘no!’, but soon I see Janaína imitating the gesture of painting with her little finger, that is, lifting her index finger as we were doing to put her finger on the ink. So, I ask Carla for the cap and say ‘you can put your little finger too!’ And she accepts, puts her finger several times and draws on her hand. Lu asks ‘did she do it?’ and I say ‘yes!’ and all the adults cheer and clap their hands with the right to say ‘congratulations Janaína!’. Janaína then doesn’t want to let go of the cap that contains the ink. Carla says goodbye and leaves the room.”

DISCUSSION

The scene with Janaína is emblematic for marking a series of repetitions in the interactions that we were witnessing in the routine of the nursery class. Janaína, a 1 year and 10 month old girl, repeatedly called all the adults in the mother’s room and, during the observations, chose an adult to ask for a lap, with whom she played a little. Sporadically, she played with the other children. Before this scene, we had already heard the report of her difficulty in planting the beans in the activity of “João e o pé-de-feijão⁸”, as she did not want to put her hands on the earth and we had also witnessed Janaína’s scene of extreme discomfort, who reacted to screams, when an adhesive tape stuck to her hand and she immediately tried to get it off her skin, not bearing anything but the one chosen by her to touch her. The baby brought us questions due to her difficulties in playing.

Some psychoanalytic research with babies (Mariotto, 2009; Bridon, 2019) places the body as the protagonist of the scene, that is, bodily manifestations communicate something of the baby’s psychic development. In this way, paying attention to the baby’s play gives us elements to understand and reflect about a message that the baby is sending to those around him and how the adult can answer there.

Returning to the scene in the nursery room, we took the coordinator Carla as a fundamental part of the intervention. She listens to my statement about Janaína and Lu’s talk about the girl’s behavior in previous days, a movement that illustrates a characteristic of Carla’s acceptance, which predominated in her posture during our stay at school. Carla assumes an empathic and helpful posture with the researchers and with Janaína - she looks at her, pays attention to her rhythm - and even assumes a family event that may be causing the girl’s avoidance behavior. She bases her assumption on her experience as a mother, but does not take this as the only truth, as she launches the idea of ​​the educators talking to the girl’s mother to find out more information about the family. We think that his keen and dedicated look contributed to the scene, as well as his position outside the class, without obligations with the results of the day’s activity, records of these and other tasks that can leave a meeting with the baby empty.

Guerra (2009, 2014a) places the rhythm, the tone of voice and the gestures of the adult as summons for the child to come closer, thus accessing intersubjectivity. Carla sits on the mat in the living room, starts to observe Janaína, notices her discomfort when putting on the “painting blouse” and authorizes the girl not to follow the same route as the other children, which would be going to the little table and paint, and invites her to come closer. For the first time, is Janaína’s negative posture seen as a code to be listened to, perhaps a way of denying the other’s way and showing her way of being in the task? Is it the process of building an individual self by Janaína?

Carla is not taken by the structure of the activity and creates a new possibility for the girl, referring to the idea of ​​psychic malleability (Golse, 2003), in which she regresses until the moment of the child, producing the condition to play. Golse (2003) brings another essential concept to play, the other’s narrative, referring that it is possible to recognize pleasure in action, through the tone of voice in which it is described. The scene features at least three adults, Carla and two researchers, using an intonation of voice that represented happiness in playing with paint, in coloring the skin, speeches that even call the attention of the other children in the class. We think that these reactions of interest, from adults and colleagues to the experience, produced curiosity in Janaína, attracting her gaze and investment.

Interesting how all the pleasure that she witnessed the adults and colleagues living may have produced Janaína’s imitation behavior, when she reproduces with her index finger the same movement of touching the paint. Thus, after being called in a unique way for a game, which was built speech by speech inside the room, Janaína prepares for experimentation, observes, prepares her body and lets her skin take on another color. The construction of the adults’ narrative respects the limits that Janaína follows and welcomes the small steps that the baby needs to take to be in the game.

In this sense, it is possible to notice how fundamental the words and reactions of those around her were. We do not know whether Janaína imitated the adult or her peers, as all of them had already been painted when she became a painter, but the summons that the adults in the scene set up for the girl’s experience to unfold is evident. In this way, we can think about how this meeting of subjects co-constructed a unique movement for Janaína to experience herself, using playful tools to contribute to her subjective development. Guerra (2009) states that the sharing of emotional states is the universal language for intersubjectivity and, in this way, it is necessary to “be with”, “know about” and “participate in”. Carla, we the researchers and little Janaína organized a unique way of “being with”, “knowing about” and “participating in”. All attentive to each other’s details and movements, with investigative eyes, looking for a respectful way to participate together in the task proposed on the day.

WHY WAS THIS INTERVENTION SO IMPORTANT TO JANAÍNA?

The researchers were attentive to Janaína’s avoidance behaviors, as we understand that “playing is part of health” (Winnicott, 1975, p. 63); so something wasn’t right with the girl. The experiments that take place in the field of the organic body indicate clues to the path of psychic development. We think that Janaína showed obstacles in the process of maternal separation, in which she produced difficulty in getting in touch with new textures, which would produce new sensations for her repertoire. Janaína seemed to anticipate bad sensations when she was offered some different tactile experimentation and chose to be touched and remain together with the adults she named as a mother, that is, elements in which she demonstrated the indifference of her primordial caregiver, a security figure that gave her exclusivity.

Playing in the scene seems to cut this baby-mother relationship (novelty-scare), as adults and colleagues signaled the pleasure of “going beyond”, that is, putting new elements in contact with the skin and new interactions to compose the subjectivity. Coloring the skin, letting the caregiver make her mark on it, an encounter that indicates the power of experimenting with the new, mixing with other elements to compose a greater repertoire of sensations, crossed by other caregivers, other than the primordial ones. From birth, mother and baby go through separation processes that delineate two bodies and two subjectivities. Birth is radical separation - separation from bodies. Then, in the construction of communication, the baby has to wait for a response from the mother to her requests, which is not always immediate, the wait separates them. After a few months, he no longer feeds exclusively on breast milk and has to wait to be fed. After about a year, she begins her first steps, investigates and discovers objects other than her mother’s body, advancing to her first words with which she will be able to talk about herself (Guerra, 2009, 2014a). Conquests of the body that the baby acquires from intersubjective co-constructions and will constitute a psychic-self separate from the mother.

Janaína, even emitting only one word during the scene, the word “no”, when Carla offers her to try the paint for the first time, she demonstrates through her body movements, the answers to the adults’ lines or questions, that is, the act of not wanting to put on the “paint blouse” what was read as her opposition to going to the table to do the activity with her colleagues. The posture of going to the lap of one of the researchers, when she was shown the ink pot, made us leave her as an observer of our action and the tilt of her index finger upwards was understood as an imitation of the gesture of touching the finger in ink like the adults and peers around them. Noisy and silent acts that Janaína showed and that formed the playful scene in the room. During the playful scene, Janaína and adults were attentive to what was said and demonstrated. Guerra (2014a) talks about “parental music” when a harmony is created between the baby and the parents. It can be seen that, in this scene, it was possible to build a measured musicality between Janaína and the adults. We think that this synchrony produced a potential space (Winnicott, 1975) which is marked by the security it produces in the child and, thus, sustains it for playing, that is, doing things.

Janaína’s opportunity to co-construct the play scene with the participation of adults and her colleagues, speaks about the potency of this moment: “The small child’s play reveals that the possibility of emergence of the subject does not occur through continuity, but through the possibility of experiencing in the bond with the other, the presence-absence discontinuity” (Barbosa, 2018, p. 348).

Playing operated as an experience of essential discontinuity for the girl who showed to be reactive to the rigid and imposing standards offered by the caregivers in the activities. The day care center was the scene of discovery for Janaína who, together, was able to create and reinvent herself with an attitude of curiosity and receptivity. Barbosa (2018) talks about this valuable action of early childhood education, which is to offer a place to play,

which implies the possibility of ensuring for the small child the condition so that he can become the author of his own playful works, sustaining his place as a subject where speech, many times, still proves to be insufficient, but which can be exercised in the protected universe of play. (Barbosa, 2018, p. 349).

However, even though playing brings so many development possibilities for the child, it is also a challenging act, because when someone plays, there is a “structure that involves loss and replacement, there is a loss behind” (Green, 2013, p. 39). It is possible to notice that Janaína hesitated in the activity of playing, as it required a different and difficult movement, a step forward in the construction of a subject separate from her mother.

Janaína demonstrated how intense the sensations that the activity of painting triggered, showed us the difficulty of receiving new elements or ‘letting oneself change color’ and, finally, the satisfaction of experimenting. The girl, after putting her finger on the paint, walked around the room smiling and firmly holding the cap of paint as her trophy, that is, a victory for being listened to as a subject of desire in her unique journey.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

From our research intention, which was to analyze the power of playful interactions between adult and child in the day care center, we understand some movements observing the co-constructions of this pair within the institution. Emphasizing that this study operated its analysis, considering the singularities of the day care center and the subjects involved, we understand that the exposed content can serve as one, among other materials, to understand other scenes in a Kindergarten school.

Thus, we can think that playing is guaranteed by law and associated with health promotion, but sometimes in education, there are several obstacles to its execution. Obstacles in the adult and baby relationship due to the bureaucracy of the institutional routine and also due to the subjective challenges of meeting the subjects.

For the meeting point to happen in play, the adult needs to regress to the baby’s way of interacting and in this movement, he meets his marks and life stories. The concept of psychic malleability (Golse, 2003) refers to this availability of the adult to make a journey to the baby he cares for and to his experience as an internalized baby and, from this encounter, we can think about intersubjectivity and interplay.

In the scene chosen for analysis, it is evident how in playing it was possible to recreate with baby Janaína a way in which she could approach the activity of painting, through listening to her language, composed of her few words and many bodily gestures and expressions. The coordinator and the researchers led Janaína’s enchantment to play, making the invitation more flexible and demonstrating in the narrative the joy of experiencing the sensation of ink on the body.

The unique organization of the playful scene was fundamental for bringing the baby closer to play. Janaína was able to approach safely in the action and make it clear that she denied a form of approach and invitation to the activity made by the educator. Through the game, Janaína could be heard and observe adults and colleagues with their strategies of executing the game, something that gave her elements to build her own action.

In the period of development of babies in the nursery 2 age group, initial subjective processes occur, such as the construction of a baby’s psychic self and, consequently, the gradual separation of the mother’s language. The Early Childhood Education professional needs to get closer to the language of the family, that is, to establish conversations and an understanding about the functioning of the family so that the child’s language does not remain foreign throughout the year of follow-up. Research about the family and the child’s behavior can bring valuable elements to decode the baby’s language.

Thus, it seems to us that this empathic and interested behavior of the adult towards the baby and his professional attitude is what allows the support of the questions about his work, in which babies are a central element. We believe that psychoanalytic listening contributes to the construction of unique work strategies between caregivers and babies, reflecting about alternatives for obstacles in the relationships of some pairs. Thus, it expands the look and brings questions to be researched about the crossings contained in the subjective scenario in the day care center.

The baby needs a caregiver as a partner and collaborator in subjective acquisitions. We understand that professionals also need listening and support to make the creative journey with the small child and find a rhythm with the baby in intersubjective encounters. Both need to feel safe and supported in institutions to be able to embark on the inventive journey of playing.

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• 2
  “Intersubjectivity and interplay in the school of Early Childhood Education: encounters and disagreements between educator and baby”.
• 3
  In two productions the author (Guerra, 2009; 2014a) describes the indicators of intersubjectivity and there is no indication of the months that this behavior occurs in the baby. However, the content indicates that it is referring to early imitations, from the time of birth, which are the baby’s act to keep in touch with their peers.
• 4
  Letters numbers 70 and 71 of the respective dates: October 3, 1897 and October 15, 1897.
• 5
  Article 227 of the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil (Brazil, 1988) and Article 4 of the ECA (Law 8069/90).
• 6
  We emphasize that the names of the children and adults mentioned in the skit are fictitious, in order to preserve the identities of the people involved.
• 7
  Advice in the area of Early Education and Initial Psychopedagogy offered by the Municipality of Porto Alegre. The work is composed of a team of health professionals that provides support to municipal schools and schools that are affiliated to the city hall, in order to guide professionals who, work in schools and accompany students who have some difficulty in development
• 8
  John and the Beanstalk.

• This paper was translated from Portuguese by Ana Maria Pereira Dionísio.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  06 Jan 2023
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  26 June 2020
• Accepted
  11 June 2022