Cops and robbers

Through play, children experiment with different adult roles.  For fun, they manipulate the behaviors, actions, and ideas in adult interactions. However, when pretending to wear the shoes of an adult, children start to understand a lot of the problems that adults face in everyday life. They initially have fun, later realizing that their role models are actually in situations that are not fun at all. Playing cops and robbers becomes upsetting because the cops start to abuse their power. Through play, children start to realize this, and it can actually be damaging to children. Although it is helpful to understand the legitimate issues that adults face, children start to gain an understanding of the dynamic between cops and robbers from an age where they are not mature enough to understand beyond what they have personally experienced. Children may develop a skewed perception of police officers and criminals because of the way they saw their friends during these games.