A game called suicide

Teacher and author Jane Katch talks about the value -- and necessity -- of violent play.

By Amy Benfer

Jan 26, 2001 | The 5- and 6-year-old children in Jane Katch's mixed kindergarten and first-grade class have invented a game they call "suicide": One child sits in the suicide seat. Another child offers the first child an apple. He accepts the apple, saying, "Goo, goo. An apple."

"It's really a hand grenade," says the second child. "Do you know you're going to explode? It's gonna kill you!"

"I'm going to commit suicide myself," says the first child, who then pretends to explode and die, while all the other children playing the game laugh.

Katch finds the game disturbing, but she doesn't prohibit the children from playing it. Instead, she encourages the children to set their own rules for violent play and carry on. In her classroom, Katch tells us in her book, "Under Deadman's Skin: Discovering the Meaning of Children's Violent Play," these rules include: "No excessive blood, no cutting off of body parts, and no blood spilled." Also, the game cannot include what the children call "mushy stuff." Says Katch, "The people in their stories cannot take off their clothes. Animals can."

A teacher for more than 20 years who studied with Bruno Bettelheim at the Orthographic School, Katch decided that it was more important to understand children's violence than it was to censor it. And for over a year, that is what she did, keeping records and transcripts of her conversations with the children she taught at a small private school in central Massachusetts.

"Under Deadman's Skin" offers a close examination of the daily interactions of the young children in Katch's care, told through careful observation, most often in the children's own words. As a book, it is compelling for its spare prose and sensitive dialogue with children. As a social document, it acts as a map for all those people -- teachers, parents and politicians -- who would like to understand why children do the things they do.

Katch spoke with Salon about the importance of allowing children to explore their fantasy lives.

In the first line of your book, you mention a game called "suicide," and you say, "I have never seen a game that I hate so much in which all the children involved are so happy." How did you first to decide to allow the kids in your class to participate in what seems to be violent play?

In the beginning, I didn't decide to allow it. It just happened. When I tried to prohibit it, it didn't work. They just became more sneaky about it, playing when they thought I wasn't listening. Then I realized that it must be very important to them.

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