Caring in the Play Middles: Mood, Affect, and the Relational Work of Intergenerational Play

Play is a fundamental way for children to explore and engage with the world, and in early childhood education, it is widely recognized as a core pedagogical responsibility. In recent years, there has been growing interest in how educators can embrace this responsibility by actively participating in children’s play, thereby supporting its intergenerational dimensions as part of pedagogical practice (Jørgensen & Koch, 2024; Bae 2009; Børgesen & Boysen, 2009; Delblanc and Wernholm, 2023). This has also sparked a focus on designing environments that support and enhance this pedagogical practice. However, much of existing research on intergenerational play primarily highlights the benefits for children, such as improved well-being, learning, and cognitive development. Studies on designing for intergenerational play have largely concentrated on interactions that occur outside formal educational settings (Pais et al. 2024; Davis et al. 2008; Zosh et al. 2017), and often conceptually focus on intergenerationality or play, without fully conceptualizing their relationship (David et al. 2012). While this research has provided valuable insights, it underscores the need for further theoretical development within intergenerational play research (Bernard, 2006; Jarrott, 2011; Kuehne, 2003; Vanderven, 2011; Oropilla & Ødegaard, 2021), and for translating these insights into design principles applicable to pedagogical contexts (Jensen et al. 2023; Gudiksen and Skovbjerg, 2020).
This chapter aims to contribute to this theoretical development by examining intergenerational play through the lens of play itself and translating these insights into actionable design principles. It centers on a largely overlooked dimension: what we term the middles of play. While research often captures the peaks of play—the excitement of beginnings and endings—it frequently overlooks the subtle, sustaining transitions where mood shifts, balances are renegotiated, and play’s livability is maintained. These middles are crucial relational spaces where inclusion, care, and sustained engagement are actively negotiated, yet they are rarely foregrounded in conventional documentation or evaluations. By attending to the middles of play, we foreground how intergenerational play depends on relational, mood-based, and affective processes. Shifting the focus toward these dynamics emphasizes the important, often invisible labor of pedagogues as active participants in sustaining play. Their skilled, sensitive adjustments—attuning to shifting moods, rebalancing energies, and caring for the relational fabric of play—are essential to sustaining intergenerational play as an open, inclusive, and livable experience for all participants.