Playing It Safe

Playing it Safe

“I believe that those boys who take part in rough, hard play outside of school will not find any need for horse-play in school.”

-Theodore Roosevelt

 American president

 1858–1919

I saw a recent report in the Wall Street Journal which found that the ever growing concern over the safety of children’s playgrounds has caused them to become dumbed down, boring, and lacking a sense of challenge or adventure. As a side effect, kids have become less interested in playing outside. I just want to rant on this topic for a second because it is something very near and dear to my heart.

In graduate school, whilst pursuing my Masters in Education, I focused a lot on the benefit of play in education, especially during early childhood. I wrote several research papers on the topic, and read from many authors, a number of them notable child psychologists or pioneers in child development. The topic fascinated me for a couple of reasons: 1) my own love of play as a child was thoroughly nurtured. Because of this, it has given me extraordinary gifts as far as my own sense of creativity, my comfort level in trying any physical activity, new or practiced, and my acute sense of self and healthy level of confidence. 2) having now worked in the field of education and child care, I have seen first-hand the effects of the “dumbing down” of activities and recreation spaces available to our kids. These effects are not pretty.

Here is something to consider: I child at age 3, when falling, will usually have pain associated with the fall, not to mention the usually scream/cry fit. But because of his size and the development of his bones at the time, which are more flexible and less likely to break, the damage to his body will be minor, and the benefit will have been a re-wiring of the brain that begins to train the body to improve coordination. The brain will make a mental note somewhat like this: Fall = pain = try to avoid pain = attempt to move body more carefully so as not to fall and experience pain. This is how we all learn things as we develop. Trial and error. Practice makes perfect.

Now, I’m not advocating letting kids run around in totally unsafe environments and see who comes out alive, i.e. survival of the fittest. What I am in favor of is doing things the way we’ve raised our kids in the past. Introducing them to the world with enough instruction and supervision so as to not put them in harm’s way, but also giving them the freedom to discover, explore, attempt, fail, try again, lose, win, succeed, feel pain, and feel joy. We are present to be a safety net if something does happen, but we also can’t hold their hands and carry them through life protecting them from any slip or stumble that may occur. I believe the term is “Helicopter Parenting”… constantly buzzing about, hovering over their children to provide protection and supervision at all times.

So, what happens then, if you constantly shield these little ones from ever having the experience of falling or hurting themselves? When they are older and have never trained their bodies to be more coordinated? I’d assume the amount of pain they are going to feel as an older child falling and getting hurt is going to be much more than as a toddler. How are their leg muscles to develop without ever having to try and jump up to reach that bar? How are their arms going to get stronger if they don’t have to try and hang onto that ring up high? How are they going to become faster if they aren’t allowed to run freely? How are they to become more coordinated if every time they fall they bounce off some rubber safety net?

Is recess going to be something to look forward to if every time they try to let loose and play a teacher or monitor blows a whistle? The only way to have fun is to conform to the list of 20 rules you must obey for fear of you or someone else’s parents suing the school because their child broke his arm. Is that something they are going to look forward to?

I saw this happen at the last school at which I worked. I was a Kindergarten teacher and typically 5 year olds LOVE recess. In fact they LIVE FOR recess. Well, turns out after so many times having to sit out because they were running across the bridge, or going up the slide, or going down the slide too fast, or running on the sidewalk or swinging too high, they ended up not looking forward to recess. Many of them (not all) even looked forward to rainy day recess when we would be stuck inside watching a movie or playing board games at tables. That’s just nuts! I remember growing up thinking that rainy day recess was practically the worst thing that could happen to my day. And I don’t think I was alone. The excitement we would experience when we were told we weren’t going to have to stay inside was palpable.

I was already disappointed at the lack of playground equipment available to these kids when half-way through the year we went outside only to find that the “big kid play scape” (the one we got to go to for special occasion recess) was torn down due to equipment deemed “unsafe”. Apparently they were going to rebuild and the model would have no fireman’s pole, no large slide, no high bars, padded surface underneath, etc. etc. Basically, the most boring play scape you could imagine as a child. No wonder they want to stay inside.

Today’s children not only don’t want to go outside, they want to sit. And watch a movie. Or play a video game.

And we wonder why we are having an obesity epidemic??

Then there is the psychological bit that bothers me. The constant worry adults present before our children.

The biggest concern I have is that we are training our future generations to be held back by fear. We are developing a nation of people living in fear. Our entire society is experiencing that right now. We are bombarded by news of this and that which poses a potential threat to us and our way of life. Every day there is a new fear. A new terror. Children can’t even play on a playground in schools without being instilled with the fear of something happening to them. You might fall! You might get put in time out for running too fast! You might scrape your knee!

Play is important to kids. It’s not just an escape from learning. It’s actually where real learning takes place. Kittens learn to do adult cat things by playing. They learn to stalk and pounce from their time spent pretending to stalk and pounce. Every animal on the planet learns this way, and humans are no different. Play is meant as dress rehearsal for life. We want our kids to grow up to be strong, smart, caring and healthy individuals. But we scare them into being lethargic, overweight, sickly, and bored. What does this say about our future?

The article I brought up makes me fired up. And it gives me hope. It talks about new innovations being created for playground equipment that can meet safety standards and also provide the type of risk-taking atmosphere needed to make a playground fun, and in my mind, effective. Play, again, is learning and how better to learn to take risks than in a supervised situation such as a playground.

So, what are your own thoughts? Are you currently aware of the changes made to playgrounds in recent years and if so, what do you think? Should we move to be more creative with our playgrounds? Is it important that we nurture the sense of adventure and risk-taking in children during their formative years? How do we get this band wagon rolling?

:-)

Here is some other reading on this topic:

The Telegraph
The Strong
Playground Design