Is Risky Play Worth the Risk?
This last year I’ve been reading a lot about the importance of risky play. Risky play being play that pushes limits and gives space for experimentation. Essentially, I have come to understand that a childhood rich in risky play supports children in learning how to manage risk and make safe choices without being limited by an adult or another outside force. Ultimately, children need risky play to ensure they develop the skill of regulating themselves. Without risky play, young people are likely to enter adulthood, where real-life life consequences are at stake, without the ability to independently assess and manage risks.
As and educator, and as a parent, I’ve had to do the work to grapple with the paradigm of supporting risky play while also owning my fear of injury, responsibility, etc. Along the way I’ve learned to move away from phrases like, “be careful,” which often stops risky play, and instead use guiding questions to address my concerns while simultaneous developing children’s problem-solving skills and extending trust in their abilities. When witnessing risky play here are my favorite go-to questions to use:
“What’s your plan?”
“Is there another way…?”
“Notice how….?”
“What do you want to have happen next?”
In addition to asking open ended question, I’ve learned to use the tool “yes and” versus saying no to a behavior or choice that feels risky or outside of my adult comfort zone. For instance, if a child asks me if it okay to jump off a log towards a pile of large rocks I can respond with “yes and” versus saying no. “Yes and” gives me an opportunity to engage the child in thinking through their choice without me directly limiting the child’s choice. “Yes and” gives me the opportunity to address my concerns and bring the child along the problem-solving journey towards a solution that supports their desire for limit pushing behavior and my desire to address safety.
In putting this concept into action, I could respond to the child who asks to jump off the log by saying, “Yes and what do you noticed around the log? Is there a different direction you could jump that gives you more space for landing?”
What I love most about the “yes and” approach is how well it can be leveraged as children’s desire for adventure and independence grows. Let’s say I am now a parent of 12-year-old child who wants to ride his bike to a local natural space area to meet his friends to go fishing. The route to the pond crosses major intersections and it’s a bit of a distance. Instead of saying no, I can say “yes and.” From there, the two of us can talk through my concerns and I can support my child in preparing for the adventure ahead while building more trust that my child can handle the varying “what ifs” that I fear could happen. For instance, I could say, “yes and let’s talk about what you will do if…”
You get lost?
You get a flat tire?
You are approached by a stranger?
You get hurt?
You wreck on your bike?
Your friends decide they want to do something else, somewhere else?
By asking guided questions and being intentional about our response to risky play in the early years, we give our children the gift of developing risk management and problem-solving skills while also relaying the message that we trust them, which in turns helps our children learn to tune-in and trust themselves. I also believe this approach to risk play gives our children the gift of developing the skills necessary to navigate a lifetime of adventure; adventure being the day-to-day moments when life does not go according to plan and real-time problem-solving is needed most.
If you want to learn more about risk play, I highly recommend the following books and blogs:
Barefoot and Balanced by Angela J. Hanscom
Wild Play by David Sobel
Adventures in Risky Play by Rusty Keeler
Let Grow blog
