El confinamiento por Covid, una oportunidad para revalorizar el juego infantil en el espacio público. El caso del barrio La Concha en Chiautempan, Tlaxcala, México

Abstract

Free play in children’s lives is a basic need for their integral development. Currently they continue to encounter many difficulties such as the loss and denial of public space to play and the pandemic has increased this exclusion. The case of the La Concha neighborhood in Chiautempan, Tlaxcala, Mexico is an example of how this process took place in count- less neighborhoods and urban colonies that have had to abandon public space, bringing as a consequence that children live confinement at home most of the time and totally in times of pandemic. Free play is universal, creative of knowledge, imaginative, autonomous, spontaneous and social; the child only needs friends, available space and time to play. For this reason, the work of adults must be aimed at favouring these three aspects, since, otherwise, it can have severe consequences for children: physical, emotional and experiential, but above all we will be depriving them of the pleasure of playing.