SummaryChildren avoid violence in the playground by continually producing social solutions to the problems that are met. Following work by the Opies (1959) and Harré (1974; 1975; 1977), this article reports observations of children's interactions in the playgrounds of a first and middle school, and proposes a number of categories for the types of solution employed. It is noted that children's strategies for avoiding violence closely resemble those used by adults, and could be regarded as part of the process of growing up.This paper was first presented at the Contemporary Violence Research Centre conference on Understanding Everyday Violence, Oxford, September 1978, and the British Psychological Society Social Psychology Conference, Cardiff, September 1978. A fuller version of the work will be available as a book, Growing up in the Playground, to be published in 1979 by Routledge & Kegan Paul. I am indebted to the Social Science Research Council for financial support for the period 1975‐78.