Qld; Abused children often don t know how to play

AAP General News (Australia)
04-04-2001
Qld; Abused children often don t know how to play

BRISBANE, April 4 AAP - Abused and neglected young children often did not know how
to play and this retarded their learning and social interaction in later life, a conference
was told today.

Occupational therapist Rod Cooper last year conducted a study of 110 children aged
between three and six years old for the University of Queensland.

He told the Occupational Therapy Australia conference in Brisbane that many of those
children had been physically or sexually abused or were neglected. All had suffered emotional
abuse.

Mr Cooper said outside the conference that play was very important for children's development
and social grounding because it helped them develop new skills and social interaction.

"From just looking at their play, we can expect there is going to be some carry-over
of those problems into new social environments such as schools, preschool and child-care
centres," he said.

"That is going to have a profound effect on how those children interact with other
children, how they interact with teachers and how they cope with the structures that those
environments have."

Boys from abused or neglected backgrounds were more likely to become aggressive, a
tendency likely to have an adverse impact in later relationships, he said.

But both boys and girls who were abused or neglected played differently than those who were not.

"Their play was much less developed, disorganised and more chaotic and there were a
lot of play delays," Mr Cooper said.

"Other behavioural elements were that there were a lack of enjoyment when they were
playing and children with not much imagination were not able to introduce pretend elements
into their play and their attention span was very short."

Early intervention was vital to prevent further damage, by providing support to parents
under stress from social isolation, drug and alcohol dependence and other risk factors
and teaching them how to play with their children, he said.

AAP rad/sc/sp

KEYWORD: ABUSE

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