INTRODUCTION

Playing games is a constituent element of human beings, it allowsthem to develop their symbolicuniverse and motor skills, expresstheir emotions, channel their fears, and explore fantasies.¹ It is muchmore common during childhood andcontributes to children's development. Games have been present in allcultures since the Paleolithic era andhave even helped to develop complexcultural manifestations, such as laws, morality, and rules of coexistence.²

Piaget considered that playing games was a valuable and relevantactivity because it helps to releasetension and express feelings likeanger, anxiety or frustration, andallows children to regulate theiremotions and communicate throughdifferent behaviors, thoughts, andneeds. Games are a chance forchildren to learn, discover differentsociety roles, develop abilities, andunderstand and take in what theylearn. Therefore, playing gamesalso becomes a " gratifying, fun, andeducational activity for children."³

Vygotsky defined games like a " changing activity that, aboveall, encourages a child's mentaldevelopment." By playing with otherchildren, a child broadens their abilityto understand the reality of theirsocial environment because they arecontinuously extending their zone of proximal development.⁴ Freud andother authors have explained howplaying games contributes to processtraumatic events and, in addition, itserves as a therapeutic resource forthe clinical recovery of hospitalizedchildren.⁵,⁸ Finally, some institutionsthat are focused on childhood claimthat " playing games is the mostimportant activity in a child's life."⁹

Traditional games played in the past century have changed asurban planning and technology haveadvanced. Such changes have resultedin new game-related activities, formsof entertainment, and bonding.¹⁰,¹¹

One of these traditional games is jacks. This is a group game thathelps to develop skills such as visualand motor coordination, calculus, respect for the rules, and socialinteraction guidelines. Five piecesare required to play jacks (uniformstones, balls, bone pieces, peachpits, beans, corn kernels, etc.). Jacksrules are described in Annex 1. In the Americas, children of the Inca Empire

played jacks; its name in Spanish (payana) comes from the Quechua pallay (" to gather, collect fromthe ground"), also known as kapichua. Toba and Wichi children played it with pits or seeds, which helped them to develop manual skills andalso learn to count. In Argentina, it is known aspayana, payanca, chinapa, tinenti, dinenti, denenti or tenenti. It is also played in different countriesworldwide and is called melakef (Morocco), h ameshavamin (Israel), handy-dandy (England), osselets (France), chinas or cantillos (Spain), matatena (Mexico), tiquichuela (Paraguay), pepitas(Bolivia), pasote (Puerto Rico), etc.

Although it has been played for thousands of years, the idea that nowadays children playjacks less often than their parents led us to studythe transgenerational validity of this and othertraditional games. No studies have been foundthat compared the dexterity games played bychildren nowadays in relation to the ones playedby their parents or how they interact with oneanother.

Undoubtedly, pediatricians will play a better health care role if there is greater knowledgeabout the games played by children in Argentinaand how parents and children bond.

In this article, we propose to assess the prevalence of dexterity games in general, andjacks in particular, in a group of healthy childrenand their parents.

POPULATION AND METHODS

This was a cross-sectional study in a sample of families with children aged 5 to 12 years whoattended their scheduled appointment to thepediatrician's office at a community teachinghospital in the spring of 2018. Families wereinvited to participate by convenience samplingand the oral consent of the accompanying familymember and the child's assent was obtained. The only inclusion criterion was that the childwas healthy. Children with genetic disorders, developmental disorders and/or chronic medicalconditions that required follow-up by a pediatricspecialist were excluded.

A questionnaire was designed by two pediatricians: one part to be completed by thefamily member and another one with the answersof the child, to be done independently from theirparents'. The first questionnaire considered thefollowing outcome measures: age and level ofeducation attained by the family member, age andsex of the child, whether they had played jacks intheir childhood, how old they were when theyplayed jacks, if they had taught their childrenhow to play jacks, favorite dexterity games whenthey were their child's age (tag, football, otherteam sports, ring-a ring-a roses, cops and robbers, jump rope, hide-and-seek or Chinese jump rope), screen hours per day (TV + computer + mobilephone + Play Station or other electronic device), frequency of dexterity games shared with theirchild. The questionnaire for children includedquestions about whether they played jacks, their favorite dexterity games, and the games sharedwith their parents (Annex 2).

The study was approved by the institutional Committee for Research Protocol Assessment (no. 3930).

Categorical data were described as absolute values and frequencies, while continuousvariables, as mean and standard deviation. Thestatistical analysis was done with the χ² testand the X test for trend. A value of p < 0.05 wasconsidered significant, and the Stata 14 softwarewas used.

RESULTS

A total of 109 families were invited to participate and none refused. One hundred andnine surveys were completed by 87 mothers,22 fathers, and the 109 children. All familieshad health insurance (social insurance programor managed care organization), and most hadcompleted tertiary or university education. Table 1 describes the characteristics of parents andchildren.

Table 1 Characteristics of parents and children 

Overall, 91.7 % of parents said that they had played jacks at some time but only 4.6 % of theirchildren played it (p < 0.00001). On average, parents had played jacks for the last time at theage of 16 ± 11.3 years, and 22 % of them mentionedthey had taught their children how to play.

Table 2 describes the transgenerational trends between the dexterity games played by theirchildren and by them at their children's age. Girls preferred to play tag, hide-and-seek, copsand robbers, and jump rope, whereas boys weremore into hide-and-seek, football, tag, and copsand robbers. Most mothers had played tag, hide-and-seek, and Chinese jump rope, whereas mostfathers had played football, hide-and-seek, andtag. It was observed that girls played Chinesejump rope less often than their mothers andfootball more often; boys played ring-a ring-aroses less than their fathers. Tag, hide-and-seek, cops and robbers, and jump rope maintained theirrelevance between parents and children.

Table 2 Dexterity games played by children and that their parents played in their childhood, by sex 

Besides, 28.4 % of parents did not usually play dexterity games with their children. Suchpercentage was higher among mothers thanfathers, 32.2 % versus 13.7 % (p = 0.003) (Table 3).

Table 3 Frequency of dexterity games played by parents and their children (n = 109) 

The games children preferred playing with their parents were grouped in the followingcategories: 52 % preferred dexterity gameswith ball control (football, tennis, basketball, etc.); 39 %, dexterity without ball control (tag, hide-and-seek, biking, etc.); 57 %, board games (puzzles, chess, cards, etc.); 10 %, electronic games (mostly Play Station); 16 %, contact games (fighting, cuarto oscuro [ hide-and-seek in thedark], tickling); and 6%, symbolic games (dolls).

DISCUSSION

In this study, we described the preferences in relation to dexterity games played byschoolchildren, the trends related to games thatremained or changed from one generation tothe next, and the proportion of fathers versusmothers who played dexterity games with theirchildren.

The results show a marked transgenerational reduction in jacks. Children play jacks muchless often than their parents. A total of 91.7 % ofparents played jacks, while only 4.6 % of theirchildren play it now; a similar situation, but to alesser extent, was observed in relation to Chinesejump rope and ring-a ring-a roses. It is strikingthat, after only one generation, children havestopped playing jacks almost altogether, althoughit had been played for at least 2000 years.

It is interesting that games like tag, hide-and-seek, jump rope, and cops and robbers have prevailed across the generations. Other games, like jacks, are clearly declining among the newgenerations. There is no knowledge on why these millennial games have been abandoned by the current generation.

In our study, children's favorite games shared with their parents were mostly motor games (dexterity games with and without ball control, contact games), followed by board, electronic, and symbolic games. A study conducted in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires compared thegames played by children aged 7-12 years andthose played by their parents and also foundthat children and their parents played mostlymotor games (47.5 % versus 58.2 %, respectively), although an intergenerational difference wasobserved in relation to electronic games (30.2 %versus 0.57 %, respectively) and symbolic games (7.6 % versus 25.6 %, respectively) in terms ofpreference.¹²

The greater involvement of girls in football may be explained by the new gender perspectivesin our culture, which tend to reduce thepreexistent clear sexual difference in children'sgames and in other areas of daily life (clothes, traditions, employability, etc.). ¹³,¹⁴ The emergenceof female football in Argentina is a sign of suchtrend.

Art has usually represented aspects of society in every era, from cave paintings tocurrent graffiti in urban areas. Figure 1 shows thepainting Children's Games, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, from 1560. It depicts different children's games, like hide-and-seek, hoop, leapfrog or treeclimbing, and in the right lower corner, there aretwo children playing with stones on the ground, which may represent jacks.

Figure 1 Children's Games, by Pieter Brueghel (1530-1569) 

It is undeniable that children's games have changed over time, and this is a manifestationof cultural changes. So much that the gamephenomenon describes how humankind andchildhood have evolved.¹⁰ As per Maestro, thetransmission of traditional games takes place intwo ways: vertically (transgenerational), in thefamily, and horizontally, in the neighborhood andschool, through socialization.¹⁵ The games thatare still prevalent are those that allow to developeducation or to maintain motor or social skills, which confirms the idea that games play the roleof the main and most effective teachers. Throughgames and toys, children learn the values of theirancestors, and maintain and convey them to thenew generations in multiple ways and spaces.¹¹

It is worth noting in this article that online games are increasingly captivating children. Asper our study, children use screens for an averageof 3.3 hours a day, compared to a study done inthe province of Córdoba, which reported thatscreen use was limited to 76 minutes a day for TV and 31 minutes for other screens.¹⁶ The impactof these games on children's development is still controversial. However, the Sociedad Argentina de Pediatria recommends to restrict TV use to1-2 hours per day.¹⁷

In urban populations, the time to play games is restricted due to the lower availability of saferecreational places, the wide range of after-schoolactivities, and the fact that cities are built focusedon their development and working citizens ratherthan on children. Cities should not be designedleaving out the needs and desires of children. This concept has been described repeatedly by Francisco Tonucci in his writings and drawings, as shown in Figure 2.¹⁸

Figure 2 The city of children, by Francesco Tonucci 

Public space (streets, parks, squares) has been decreasing due to the city's urban agglomerationsand the changes in its building infrastructure. Such reduction in recreational spaces has alsobeen described in the study by Stefani, whichreported that the use of the streets and thesidewalk as a space for playing games by childrendecreased from 25.5 % to 6 % compared to theirparents.¹² Likewise, another study analyzed thespace preferred by children to play games and100 % stated that they preferred doing activitiesoutdoors and in open or semi-open large areas.¹⁹

In addition, article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child describes the right of thechild " to rest and leisure, to engage in play andrecreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts," as well as " to participate fullyand with equal opportunities in cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity."²⁰

Our study shows that many parents admit that they do not usually play dexterity games withtheir children, particularly mothers. These results, which are based on the questions answered bythe parents, should be supplemented with thesubjective experience of children in relation totheir parents' habits. Based on a study conductedin 3573 children younger than 6 years, it couldbe said that game-sharing between parents andchildren is an extremely variable activity, whichmay range from 10 % to 70 % among families overa child's life experience.²¹

Possibly, current employment modalities with extended working periods may interferewith the time available for playing games. Thisway, the ability to see the world from children'sperspective is gradually disappearing, and thismay modify the communication and relationshipwith them.²²

In addition, it is observed that gender stereotypes are still prevalent given that mothersplay less dexterity games than fathers. Otherstudies have described that gender behavior isshaped in children based on age and sex, initiallystarting with their families.²³

Some of the limitations of this study are that the sample was small and included urbanfamilies with health insurance and a high levelof education, so results cannot be extrapolated toother social groups or regions of Argentina.

Finally, more information is required so that pediatricians are able to better understand themeaning of these changes in children's games andtheir impact on development.

CONCLUSION

Tag, cops and robbers, hide-and-seek, and jump rope have maintained their prevalence overtwo generations; however, the frequency of othergames, like jacks, Chinese jump rope, and ring-aring-a roses, has reduced significantly. Girls playfootball more often than their mothers, and bothmothers and fathers tend to play few dexteritygames with their children.