Escuchar la queja, escuchar la infancia: Una mirada a las intenciones de las quejas infantiles que emergen del juego libre

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to understand children’s complaints during free play as narrative acts through which they express intentions, construct meanings, and participate in shaping collective life. This research is situated within the field of Childhood and Culture, specifically within the research line of Children’s Languages and Narratives, recognizing children as social, cultural, and linguistic subjects capable of interpreting, re-signifying, and producing meanings regarding the experiences they encounter in their everyday contexts. From this perspective, complaints are understood as manifestations of children’s knowledge and as forms of participation through which children communicate emotions, conflicts, agreements, expectations, and understandings of the world they inhabit.The study was conducted using a qualitative interpretive approach and a narrative research design that enabled an exploration of children’s voices within educational settings. Data were collected through audio recordings of complaint situations that emerged spontaneously during free-play periods in two educational institutions in Bogotá. Subsequently, the information underwent a process of transcription, in-depth reading, categorization, and analysis through the triangulation of children’s narratives, theoretical frameworks, and the researchers’ observations. The findings reveal that complaints constitute a complex narrative and cultural practice mediated by language, through which children construct interpretations of the situations they experience, defend their viewpoints, negotiate meanings, and actively participate in the construction of social coexistence. The narratives analyzed made possible to identify various intentions associated with complaints, including complaints as mechanisms for seeking restorative actions, complaints with a regulatory intention, complaints aimed at requesting adult mediation and seeking the truth, complaints intended to obtain recognition and justice, and complaints functioning as acts of reporting or denouncing significant events. Furthermore, the findings indicate that free play constitutes a privileged context for cultural production in which children build agreements, reinterpret rules, negotiate meanings, and circulate knowledge acquired across different contexts of socialization. Within this process, complaints emerge as narrative expressions that make possible to understand the ways in which children participate in organizing collective experiences and constructing relationships with others. Likewise, the teacher assumes an important role as both interlocutor and mediator, fostering spaces of listening that legitimize children’s voices and enable the recognition of their perspectives. The study concludes that complaints constitute a legitimate form of expression, participation, and meaning-making through which children mobilize knowledge, experiences, and understandings of social life. Recognizing their narrative, cultural, and pedagogical value entails strengthening educational practices centered on listening to children’s voices, acknowledging children as active protagonists of culture, and valuing language as a fundamental mediator in the construction of meanings and social relationships.