The Risk Of Avoiding Risky Play In Childhood.

It can be downright terrifying as a parent at times to watch your child become engrossed in risky play.

You want to step in don’t you. You want to protect them at all cost don’t you. You want to keep them from hurt don’t you. In past episodes I have spoke a great deal about the benefit of risky play but in this episode I’m going to flip that on its head by looking at what happens if you prevent your child from taking part in risky play?

So, what happens if you prevent this? It is certainly possible to let childhood go by without these types of experiences.

The Truth About Avoiding Risky Play

Keeping our children indoors on even terrain for most of their childhood might keep them from having some scrapes and bruises.

Quite simply though your valiant efforts to keep your child free from any bodily harm in the short term, can lead to some significant consequences in the long term; both physically and mentally.

Lets be blunt now. A risk-free childhood doesn’t provide children with the physical and mental feedback they need for proper growth and development and so normal child development is harmed.

In the long term, they will more clumsy and much be prone to accidents due a lack of development in many of their bodily system but crucially their proprioceptive system. Additionally, their bodies won’t have experienced the ligament stretching and bone strengthening it needs. Both of these things can lead to significant injury.

Developmentally Damaging

More worrying still is that risky play deprivation can also contribute to a fear, discomfort and dislike of the environment, reduced sense of personal control and emotions, increased social isolation and a reduction in happiness; all of which are associated with anxiety.

Children naturally want to challenge their bodies. Challenge is integral to development. As physical movements grow more complex, so do the connections within the brain. This innate drive to move in different ways actually makes your child smarter!

There are occasions children are unsuccessful when taking risks, to learn about their abilities, which may lead to minor injuries such as cuts and bruises. It takes time for children to master risks and succeed at new challenges.

By the very nature of risky play the opportunity for injury is increased if play is mismanaged or ill judged, however minor injury holds developmental benefit for young learners.

Through facing adversity of failure, children build hardiness, self reliance, self motivation and emotional competency benefiting them in the future. This said children are often able to self regulate risk so that it is appropriate to their age and abilities.

Children Wish To Avoid Pain At All Cost

If you hadn’t noticed children are smart. They don’t want to get hurt. They wish to avoid pain, like all of us. It’s all about allowing risk but minimising the harm and maximising the learning potential. When given a chance, without interference children appropriately manage their risk every. single. time. Research shows us this.

If we learn that we fall when we do a certain movement with our body, then we can adjust so we don’t fall the next time. In order to keep our children the safest, we need to let them experience reasonable risks, on a regular basis, as they grow. Their development is far too complex for us to orchestrate, but their little bodies know what comes next.

Adults That Interfere Can Cause Harm

It becomes way more tricky for them to manage when adults interfere whether they be placing your child in risky situations such as in a tree they want to climb or by prohibiting risky play children are unable to test and become familiar with its possibilities, their own limits and abilities.
They will then one day go ahead and try it in a way that lacks judgement, practice and knowing which may end in avoidable errors.

All we need to do is to place them in the right environment, and the best environment for childhood growth and development is unequivocally the great outdoors. You may ask why. The simple answer is that nature helps immensely with slow, incremental risk chances. A great example to illustrate what I mean by this is that our youngest children can’t climb the tallest trees as the trees branches are out of reach from little legs.

However longer legs and stronger muscles of older children are able to take on this challenge followng several years of incremental practice in other ways. These children will begin by starting on a small fallen log, moving onto something more difficult to balance on, like a rope tied between two trees. Initially, they might ask for a finger or a hand to hold. Eventually, they conquer this new set of movements without any help and then progress on to something more difficult.

My Advice To You

It may terrify us seeing them up a tree or using sharp tools or play fighting- But they know what’s to far out of their reach and ultimately what’s not and it is an essential in their development.

I always encourage parents to help risky play but through constructive words and modelling of how they would do it. This way you will be able to keep your child safe by guidance alone.

Now you may not be confident in helping your child’s risky play and this is more than OK. I would firstly encourage you to listen to anther episode I did called 5 Tips For Parents To Make Permitting Risky Play A Little Easier.

If this still isn’t your cup of tea, but you now understand how important risky play is to your child development, find your closest Forest School. Research has actually shown parents feel much more confident with their child taking risks at Forest School than anywhere else, due to its structured environment and specialist adult — The Forest School leader.

The Role Of The Unique Risk-Benefit Analysis.

At Forest School their risk is managed by a special risk benefit analysis I believe is unique to the movement. Here the Forest School leader will take all known or potential play activities that hold risk within them and draft up how they an assessment of what the risks are, how they are going to lessen the risk and what the benefits are to your child by doing that particular risky play choice.

Not only this but the leader is always on hand to constructively support and guide your child to take appropriate risks for their age and stage and to manage their own risk appraisal.

Teaching key life skills so you don’t have too! To find your local Forest School I’d highly recommend checking out Little Green Explorers. ~

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