When you were 13 years old, what did you do? Many Brazilians can answer this question with “I worked”, “I helped at home”, “I woke up four in the morning to sell something”, “I took care of other children”, among other answers. The point is that, even today, there are children and adolescents facing working hours with activities like these that we have mentioned throughout Brazil.
In 2020, the “ECA” (Brasilian Child and Adolescent Statute) celebrates its 30th anniversary and, in these decades, it has been an important instrument for the eradication of child labor, as it is a legal guideline for comprehensive protection for children and adolescents.
Work for children under 16 is prohibited by the Federal Constitution, the “CLT” (Brasilian Labor Laws) and the “ECA”, except as an apprentice, from the age of 14.
More than 1.8 million boys and girls from 5 to 17 years old work in the country, according to data from the “IBGE” (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), in 2016. Most of them, 54.4%, in an irregular situation. Of the total, 190 thousand are between 5 and 13 years old.
“Child labor places on the child and adolescent the responsibility of providing support for the family, in addition to preventing these children from using their physical and mental skills for playful and intellectual development,” explains social worker Joyce Corazza. She says that children “stop receiving stimuli appropriate to their developmental phase and are also prevented from attending school – and when they attend they are too tired and worried to learn”.
In Brazil, there are more than 90 forms of child labor and many of them can place children and adolescents in situations close to slavery, such as: sale and trafficking of children; debt bondage; servitude; forced or compulsory labor (including forced or compulsory recruitment of children to be used in armed conflicts).
“Child does not work, child gives work” is a phrase from Palavra Cantada’s song, released in 1998. When we occupy children and teenagers at work, we are depriving them of playing. Listen to the music:
For the educator Zenobia Abreu, playing is a natural behavior of human beings. “Whenever we can play, whether to relieve pain, to imagine a situation that would be favorable for us and to imagine adventures, we prepare ourselves for possible mismatches in life,” she says. “Play helps us to prepare for what lies ahead and even for the present”.
Zenobia teaches public education and plays with her students. “They imagine possible situations and that can help to reduce anxieties and realize that things can flow in less complex ways,” she says.
She gives an example of play and what it can contribute to children’s development. “In improvisation theaters, we use any word and create a story about that word. Further, the objective, is to make them learn the meaning of the word and creating phrases, is also to help them in situations of surprise, in which they need to make decisions, learn to ask for help, to count on each other, to listen, waiting for their turn to speak, thinking before saying something and having fun with it all ”, she says.
Looking from this perspective, playing is important not only for children and teenagers, but for adults too, right? Let’s play!
