Rough And Tumble Play At Forest School

Today, I’m going to be looking at a play type children absolutely need, but often parents shy away from.

This play type is promoted at Forest School, when instigated by the children, for a variety of reasons that I will explore over the next few moments. But what is this play type you might ask? Rough and Tumble.

What Is Rough And Tumble Play?

Many adults have fond, childhood memories of play that involved wrestling, tickling, chasing, and being bounced, swung, or lifted.

This type of play is called rough-and tumble and can fall into the realms of risky play which is equally as exciting for children as I’ve discussed in several previous episodes.

Rough and Tumble, simply refers to the vigorous type of behaviours, including some that may look like fighting, that occur quite naturally in play. This play type is not a new phenomenon. Young children in all cultures engage in rough-and-tumble play.

It is play that highly spontaneous meaning it happens suddenly without much planning and is extremely fun for children. This is quite evident by their smiles and laughter when engaged in this type of play.

Rough-and-tumble is a highly social play that involves physical contact, positive emotions, shared stories, and vigorous activities such as jumping, swinging, chasing, and play fighting. This type of play is a normal activity for children from preschool to early adolescence.

Isn’t That Just Fighting Though?

Let’s be clear here rough and tumble is a type of play and is characterised like all play, by fun, child imposed limits and excitement.

Not pain, tears or injury. Although these may happen they are never the intent of this play type but even then they have massive learning benefits as you can imagine, right.

Parents and teachers often worry that rough-and-tumble play will escalate into real fighting. However, from my experience in Forest School rough-and-tumble play leads to real fighting less than 1% of the time. Most children know that rough-and-tumble play is not real fighting. Therefore, they act appropriately in order to sustain the play.

Ok. So What’s The Difference?

It is easy to understand though why rough-and-tumble play is often mistaken for aggression or misbehaviour as it can be difficult to distinguish between play and real fighting, because the actions of both can appear similar for adults. However, there are a few tell-tale signs to help you determine the difference.

Real fighting:
At least one person is not willing to be a part of this interaction.

Intention is to inflict pain or harm

Rigid, controlled or stressed facial expressions (grimacing or scowling)

Children do not voluntarily return to the interaction

Play fighting:
Both are willing participants.

Intention is to have fun

Relaxed facial expressions (smiling)

Children come back to the play again and again

Admittedly though, there may be times it does boil over, where one child becomes emotionally overwhelmed by the situation even at Forest School.

What Happens Without It?

Stopping of preventing children from experiencing rough and tumble play is a bad choice to make as with other types of play, rough and tumble is crucial to your child’s healthy development even in the moments of boil over.

Children need safe opportunities for vigorous, physically active social play to help them learn about themselves, their limits and others. With guidance from a Forest School Leader and their knowledge of how to interpret and interrupt behaviour can reset how a child may be feeling at that moment and leads to positive outcomes in the long term.

The benefits of rough and tumble shapes many physical, social, emotional, and cognitive behaviours in your child and for these reasons is why its promoted at Forest School.

So What Are The Benefits For My Child?

Forest School is all about that holistic development of your child that really can only be accomplished through play; all play. Rough and Tumble helps your child learn self-control, compassion, boundaries, and about their own abilities compared to other children.

Chasing games exercise your child’s body as well as developing social skills in the same moment. Your child will independently problem-solve and self-correct in order to remain with the group activity as nobody wants fun to end do they?

Your child will also learn how to adjust to change in the play scheme and assess how their playmates respond to those changes. Too rough? Ok I need to dial it back abit. Your child also learns how to show care and concern when a playmate falls and to express their thoughts to others in a game.

Rough and tumble play is quite unique in that it requires opposing social skills of competition and co-operation. It’s kind of like the two are on a set of balance scales.

Competition includes defending oneself, facing adversity, and dealing with conflict in a pro-social manner. A healthy sense of competition enhances a child’s self-esteem and makes it more likely they will stand up for themselves.

Basic aspects of cooperation include being able to listen to others, see things from the other person’s viewpoint, taking turns, and sharing.

If your child is too competitive they may become socially isolated and unable to work with others. If your child is to cooperative they may not learn to assert or defend themselves self correctly. Rough and tumble play provides your child with the chance to navigate these tricky waters and steer their own ship onto the right course.

Children who are successful in rough and tumble play develop skills for later life that will effect them positively. Less successful children who are unable to grasp these concepts in early childhood are at risk of becoming less socially successful and more aggressive adolescents.

Is There A Difference Between Boys And Girls?

These benefits are not just exclusive to just boys either; which I presume is the gender you most associate with this type of play. Girls to enjoy, and benefit from rough and tumble play. However, there are differences that are noticed at Forest School.

Boys seem to engage in rough-and-tumble play more frequently and at a higher energy level than girls. Boys’ rough-and-tumble play also tends to be more hierarchical, active, intense, competitive and aggressive than that of girls.

Now, girls’ rough-and-tumble play involves more language than the boys. And their scripts are typically based on caring, protecting, and rescuing while boys’ scripts are generally related to fighting and play strength competition.
At Forest School rough and tumble play that involves both boys and girls is more complex than single-gender play which is fascinating to observe and incredibly beneficial for your child to be part of.

Such play here is mostly likely to involve chasing. Girls are most likely to initiate the chase games, often through a “touch and run” action and can maintain the play by continuing to give boys directions as their attention often wanders.

Children create complex stories at these times and these tend to involve boys pretending to be some kind of monster and girls running away from them. Stories are varied and based on themes, such as capturers and captives, dodge and catch, and poison touch in which boys play dead until a girl touch revives them.

How Can I Support This Play At Home?

Now you may be wondering outside of Forest School how you could support this play type?

The first thing to think about when going about rough and tumble is to ensure the area used is safe of hazards that will hurt you or your child. This is often why outside spaces are the best as they generally have less hazards in a small area unlike, say your lounge.

Things to be mindful of here are hard edges, trip hazards, space to manoeuvre, glasswear nearby and hard flooring. All of which will turn fun into pain quite rapidly.

Next, it’s about letting your child lead the rough and tumble play sequence. It is more than likely the level of their play will be age appropriate and you can judge your actions from that. If your actions were too much, it will end the fun, too little and the play wont have the desired effect for your child.

A further final point to note here is to balance your win/loose rate. With both comes hugely apposing but immensely beneficial feelings for your child.
A great way to start this type of play if you’re unsure is something called sock war. All players begin with one sock on their foot and the idea is to remove the other player or players sock without loosing yours. Try it! It is hilarious and harder than it sounds!

The idea and benefit behind rough and tumble play is all about helping your child understand how to regulate their emotions, how to safely push and extend their limits, how to assess risky situations, and how to get along well with others.

This ultimately could be related partly to what Forest School is all about, in a nutshell too and why I suppose each complement each other so beautifully.

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