September 21, 2025 • 17 mins
Are we protecting our kids too much? Today we tackle the controversial topic of risky play — climbing trees, speeding down hills, roughhousing, even handling tools. The things that make parents anxious might actually be the very things kids need most. Discover why risk is essential for resilience, confidence, and courage — and how to give your child the freedom to play without pushing them too far.
KEY POINTS
- Why “risky play” isn’t dangerous play — it’s just play the way we grew up.
- The Canadian Paediatric Society’s 9 types of risky play (and how to try them at home).
- Why broken arms aren’t the worst thing, but bubble-wrapping kids might be.
- The surprising link between risky play and lower anxiety in children.
- Five simple ways to say yes to risk while keeping things developmentally appropriate.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE
“You want your kids to be as safe as necessary — not as safe as possible.”
RESOURCES & RELEVANT LINKS
- Jonathan Haidt, After Babel Substack
- Healthy childhood development through outdoor risky play: Navigating the balance with injury prevention | Canadian Paediatric Society
- Roald Dahl quote on kids and risks
- Playing It Safe May Be The Biggest Risk Of All [Article]
- Resilience: Developing strength, calm and kindness in our kids [Webinar]
- #50 Risks and Rolling Down Hills [Happy Families Podcast]
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS
- Say yes more often when your child wants to try something new.
- Get kids outdoors — nature is the best playground.
- Encourage rough-and-tumble play and sports.
- Ditch screens when possible; real play builds real skills.
- Step back — give your kids space to take age-appropriate risks.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Lately, I've been doing a lot of resilience workshops, lots
of parents worried about their kids resilience. There's one topic
that I bring up in that resilience workshop that gets
parents one of two things, either very very excited or
very very upset, nervous, worried and anxious. The topic is
risky play Stay with us, Kylie, you can understand both.
(00:27):
Right as soon as I start saying it's good for
your children to do things that are risky, you can
see why they might hesitate. They might pause and say, yeah,
but are you.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Talking about leaving your kids with some matches and paper. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Absolutely, that's what camping is.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
For climbing the climbing frame on their own.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
A bit boring. I'd liked more risk than that. Let's
speak about climbing frames for a sec. When you were
a youngster, back in the olden days before computers BC,
what was your favorite piece of playground equipment.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It was this massive pine tree in the back of
my school playground.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Sorry just pause right there. Note I said playground equipment,
and you have gone straight out of the playground to
the tree. I love that this was not prescripted. You
didn't know the question was coming. Tell me more about
the pine tree. Why'd you like it so much?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
It would have been maybe seven stories high, like, it
was massive, and it had these beautiful big bows just
stretching out, which felt like for Miles as a little kid,
and me and my friends would climb up and we
would whoa, woh woah, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Hang on, you're at school and you're climbing trees. Yeah,
that was allowed.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
That was allowed.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
And we would each claim about and that was our bedroom.
And we used to take some pine leaves and pine
needles and sweep the floor because there was no grass underneath,
that was all dirt. And then we'd use the pine
cones and we'd make, you know, different things to eat.
Was just so much fun. Like that is honestly, hands
down my favorite childhood memory. Justin yes, what was your
(02:09):
favorite playground equipment when you were a kid?
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Hey, thanks so much for asking. My favorite? I had
a couple. Do you remember those? I think that you
would call it a merry.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Go round, a chuck up spinning thing.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Well, it wasn't so much a chuck up thing. I'm
going to get to that in a sec. It was
the thing where you'd get I don't know, five or
ten kids sitting on it, and then one person would
hold the handrail and just run as fast as you
could and spin as fast as you could. And it
was just delightful to stand on that thing and push
(02:41):
it around in a circle as fast as you could.
I don't know if anyone got sick on it, but
super sou all the time. So we also had this
thing at a park near my house. It was kind
of like a little sphere and you could climb into
it and there was a handle in the middle that
you could spin the handle that was the vomitron.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Oh, that's disgusting, spin around.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
And also at the park where near where I grew
up in Niagara Park, just off Gilda Drive, there was
a park there and it had what felt at the
time to be the biggest slide in the world. Just
down the road from my grandma and grandpa in Cardigan
Street in Auburn, there was a park as well, just
next to Duck Creek and they had a slide. So
the big slide near where I drew up, it followed
(03:23):
the land as the land slid down, It just went
down the land, so you could always just get out
of the slide and put your feet on the ground,
whereas the one in anm Pops. It had the tallest
ladder of any slide I've ever seen in any playground
in history. It was huge. They were my favorites. Oh
and big swings, not the little playground swings like we
(03:43):
have now. Back in my day, I can't believe I
just said that we used to have swings and they
were so big that you couldn't reach the person as
they swung back to you because they were swinging so high.
We don't do any of that sort of stuff anymore.
And the reason that we don't have that sort of
playground whipment anymore is because people are worried that the risks. Well,
I think counsels are worried that somebody's going to get
(04:05):
sued because an arm will be broken, or a leg
will be broken, or somebody's going to get knocked unconscious
because a piece of steel hits them as this merry
go round spins around really fast. But here's the thing,
didn't really happen that much. Kids figured it out.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I remember a couple of kids breaking their arms on
the monkey bars when I was growing up. But when
you look at the number of children that went through
the school.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Or the hours of play on those monkey bars.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Exactly, it was such a minute minority. It wasn't just
a minority, it was tiny.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Okay, unplanned. Question, how serious is it when your child
breaks an arm? Like, is it that big of a deal?
Speaker 2 (04:43):
It's not.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
No, it's a story for the rest of your life. Like,
we really do worry about this stuff, and I'm not
sure that we're worried about the right kind of thing.
I want to talk about this idea of risky play.
Play that is risky is play that involves heights, that
involves speed, the potential for impact, play that involves independence
(05:05):
and just for find I'm going to throw and play
that involves tools. And the central point that I want
to make here is that when we grew up, it
wasn't called risky play.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
It was just played.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
It's exactly what it was. We've sanitized play. We've sanitized
the life, the learning, and the opportunity out of play.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
When I went to preschool, so I was four years old,
and I still have vivid memories of the workbench. It
was supplied with all the clamps that we needed the nails,
the hammers, and it was all there, so I could
hammer all the different recyclable items onto a piece of
wood and then take it home and show my mom
and dad proudly what I had made.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Parents are struggling so much with the idea of risky
play that the Canadian Pediatric Society has put a list
together of how we can teach parents to do risky
play at home. Wow, and I know there's a wow
factor there, but I also, based on the conversations that
I'm having in various halls and teaching rooms and conferences
around the country, I want to go through this list
(06:10):
with you. We have limited time for it, so I
am going to go quickly, but feel free to interject
wherever you want. They've highlighted how you can do risky
play at home.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
But here's the struggle though. There's no risky play anywhere allowed.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
That's why so is where it's got to happen.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
So parents follow suit, right.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Of course, but with the very best of intentions. We
just don't want our kids to get hurt. It's horrible
when you can get hurt, it really is. We had
a daughter who fell off It wasn't even a monkey bar,
but it was that kind of thing and she broke
her arm. We didn't realize for a few hours.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
It wasn't a few hours, okay, maybe half an hour.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
And you guess what, She's got a great story about
how she fell off while were down at the Vella
Drome show.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
By the time I saw her ten minutes later, because
I'd sent her to the car, her arm was completely.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Bowed right right, it was broken. It was ugly. Here's
how you encourage risky play at home. Ideally some of
the kids don't break a leg or break an arm,
but some of they might, and that's where the fun is.
Playing at height. The Canadian Pediatric Society says that means
that you give your children opportunities to climb and jump
and balance at height. A note there's no suggestion that
(07:16):
there needs to be soft fall or a rubber mat
underneath them.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
It's interesting again. I just had another visual. One of
the play equipment options at my school when I was
in grade one and two was this balancing beam. But
it wasn't a balancing being close to the ground like.
It was a full probably a meter and a half
off the ground like when I fell. I couldn't like
I didn't reach the height of the balancing beam.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I was doing that when I was a kid. Once
my dad said, look, it just didn't have fun. But
if you fall and break both your legs, don't come
running to me. Playing at speed that involves maybe riding
a bike at high speed, or sliding or running. We
used to do cardboard box sliding down steep hills with
the kids. We'd get like a refrigerated box, sit on
the box and just slide down this grassy hill. When
we were living in Woongong there was a great spot
(08:03):
for it, and we've also as the kids got old
and gone ice blocking so much fun. Sit on a
block of ice that you can buy from wherever you
buy wholesale ice. Sit on the block of ice and
slide down a grassy hill. Play involving tools, supervised activities
involving an axe, saw, knife, hammer, or ropes. I mean camping.
That's why kids love camping. Here's the next one that
(08:32):
they suggest. Play involving potentially dangerous elements, in other words,
playing near fire or water. I remember being on a
hike with the kids once and we found a waterfall
and just watching the kids scramble over these jagged rocks
near the base of the waterfall and thinking this is
so good. They're climbing over these jagged rocks and this
(08:52):
could go really badly. But here's the critical thing. They
take the risks that are appropriate for them and they
learn how to navigate and judge the risks. Rough and
tuble play so there's wrestling play, fighting, fencing with sticks,
play with risk for disappearing or getting lost. The Canadian
Pediatric Society say that exploring play spaces neighborhoods or woods
(09:15):
without adult supervision or in the case of young children
with limited supervision, like hiding behind the bushes, is good
for them. There are two others, play involving impacts, so
you could crash into something or someone, maybe repeatedly and
of course only for fun. And lastly, vicarious play. Vicarious
play is experiencing the thrill of watching other, often older children,
engaging in risky play. I love the list.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Another visual I went to my cousin's house one day
I probably was about eight, and she had a brand
new set of roller skates. The problem was she lived
at the top of this really steep driveway, so there
was nowhere to roll the skates.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
That's brilliant.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I had never used a pair of roller skates and
I spent probably three or four for hours trying to
master roller skating down the driveway.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
That's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I think my bum must have been so black and
blue by the end of that day.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I need to make a quick note. We do need
to make sure when we consider that list, that what
we're encouraging our children to do is developmentally appropriate. So
there's a great line that I picked up from Jonathan
Hates after Babel Substack. He said, you want your kids
to be as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible.
So we do need to still recognize that there are risks.
(10:33):
That's why it's called risky play, and it needs to
be developmentally appropriate. A four year old can't do what
a fourteen year old can, and we shouldn't encourage that.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I loved what you said before about the fact that
as we allow our children the opportunity to spread their
wings a little bit and engage in risky play, they
will take the risks that are appropriate for them. Yes,
and as adults, it's really important that we don't squash
that in a voice and push them to do things
(11:00):
beyond their capacity within reason.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
One other thing that I need to emphasize, and that's
this pushing point. We've got to allow our children the
option of saying no. So this is not about us
making them do risky play. This is about creating an
environment where they have the capacity to take risk. It's
about agency or autonomy. We need to be careful with pressure.
(11:26):
We didn't have adults pushing us to be risky when
we were kids. We just went and played case in point.
And I think I've shared this story before. Last Christmas,
we spent some time with my parents on the New
South walest Central Coast. My parents have a boat and
they have a donut that you can tie to, not
for eating, a donut that you can lay on and
lay behind the boat and zoom around. And our youngest Emily,
(11:48):
who at the time was nine, was terrified this was
risky for her. She's going to put a life jacket on,
hold on to the donut, and then get whipped around
the water and then.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Fall into jellyfish infested water.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
There are millions of big jellyfish in the water. And
so we put her on the donut and said, promise,
we're not going to knock you off. We just want
you to get used to it. She was happy to
do that if she had a sister on either side
of her, and the donut was big enough for the
three of them to lay there. And after about thirty
seconds she was like, I like it. And then she
started to give us directions faster, faster. She wanted the speed,
(12:23):
she wanted the impact, she wanted the thrill, she wanted
the risk. She just needed to acclimatize to it. Now.
She did not fall off. We made sure that while
we gave her a lot of fun, we kept it
just to a level where she could barely hang on.
But she hung on. The critical thing here is that
we are now going to go back there next year
because she's dying. Every time she gets the chance Poppy
(12:46):
wink and we go on the boat again. She's dying
to get on there. She still doesn't want to fall off,
but as she gets bigger, as she has more experience
with it, she will continue to push those boundaries until
she's delighted to fall off and hopefully there won't be
any jelly fish in the water.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
So you've got five tips for parents who are struggling
to engage in risky play.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Let me dive into these five things right before I do.
Research evidence shows some people are listening to this saying yet,
but I've got an anxious child. I can't do this
for them. Risky play, according to recent research, helps children
overcome anxiety disorders and the cognitive distortions that go along
with them.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Anyone who's done something hard knows the thrill that comes
from having achieved it, like you get to the other
side and you're just.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
You're pumped, yep, and anxious children they don't get pumped
until they've overcome it. So they see something that has
some uncertainty, they don't know how to tolerate it. They
do tend to interpret ambiguous situations quite negatively, and they
underestimate their ability to cope if the situation has some
level of uncertainty around it. In risky Play, kids practice
(13:56):
dealing with strong, ambiguous emotions. Because thrill and excitement are
also interpreted as fear and terror. They learn how to
cope with that. They learn how to deal with situations
that abound with uncertainty, and it shows them that they're
resilient and capable of coping when things go wrong. The
research shows that children with more opportunities for risky play
(14:17):
have lower internalizing symptoms that you would consider characteristic of
anxiety disorders. Just had to say that. So let's dive
into what we can do to encourage our kids to
be playing in ways that are good for them, that is,
that are risky see above. Number one, say yes, like
don't be the parent says, oh no, you can't do that.
Just say yes. Number two, be outdoors because outdoors lends
(14:40):
itself to risky play much more than being indoors on
carpet staring at a TV. Number three. Encourage sports and
rough and tumble play and time near water. Obviously, safety
does need to be a factor, but look for opportunities
to be outside and move your bod and number four
(15:01):
get rist screens. Number five, get out of the way.
Just get out of the way. Stop controlling. I don't
want to minimize the significance of breaking an arm, but
breaking arms are okay. It's of course it's painful. Of
course there's stress associated with it, but breaking an arm
is okay. The kids can take risks.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
A handful of years ago, our eldest convinced me to
jump out of a plane with her Yes, I may
have been saying what I thought might be my last
prayer that morning before I left to get in that bus,
and at the end of it, she asked me if
I was glad I did it, And the reality is
(15:40):
I wasn't right. I actually wasn't.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
I wasn't expecting it.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I didn't I didn't love the way my body felt
in that space. Does that mean that I'm completely risk averse. No,
There's plenty of things that I'm happy to do that
still leave me feeling really really anxious in the moment.
But I've worked out what my tolerance level is in
relation to what I'm willing to put myself through. I'm
(16:06):
still willing to do hard things, but there are some
things that I just know is not worth the payout.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yep. Yeah, And I think that's a really really good point.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
And so yeah, I just think we help our kids
to recognize there are some things that are worth pushing
through and there are other things that if this is
too much for you, that's okay. Yep.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Agency matters. The research is pretty clear when you let
your kids take risks, they become more physically developed, they
are more emotionally resilient, they develop more social skills, they're
better at risk assessment, they're more creative in terms of
the way they solve problems, their mental health improves, and
they have a sense of agency autonomy over their lives.
It's just so valuable. We really hope that you've enjoyed
(16:47):
the conversation today. I know we've gone over time. It's
such a great topic though, isn't it. The Happy Families
podcast is produced by Justin Rwland from Bridge Media. If
you'd like more information about making your family happy, we'd
love for you to join us at Happy families dot
com dot I U check out our product. It's called FELT.
It's part of the Happy Families membership. FELT stands for
fostering emotional learning Together. It's all available at happy families
(17:10):
dot com dot a he
Lately, I've been doing a lot of resilience workshops, lots
of parents worried about their kids resilience. There's one topic
that I bring up in that resilience workshop that gets
parents one of two things, either very very excited or
very very upset, nervous, worried and anxious. The topic is
risky play Stay with us, Kylie, you can understand both.
(00:27):
Right as soon as I start saying it's good for
your children to do things that are risky, you can
see why they might hesitate. They might pause and say, yeah,
but are you.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Talking about leaving your kids with some matches and paper. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Absolutely, that's what camping is.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
For climbing the climbing frame on their own.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
A bit boring. I'd liked more risk than that. Let's
speak about climbing frames for a sec. When you were
a youngster, back in the olden days before computers BC,
what was your favorite piece of playground equipment.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It was this massive pine tree in the back of
my school playground.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Sorry just pause right there. Note I said playground equipment,
and you have gone straight out of the playground to
the tree. I love that this was not prescripted. You
didn't know the question was coming. Tell me more about
the pine tree. Why'd you like it so much?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
It would have been maybe seven stories high, like, it
was massive, and it had these beautiful big bows just
stretching out, which felt like for Miles as a little kid,
and me and my friends would climb up and we
would whoa, woh woah, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Hang on, you're at school and you're climbing trees. Yeah,
that was allowed.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
That was allowed.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
And we would each claim about and that was our bedroom.
And we used to take some pine leaves and pine
needles and sweep the floor because there was no grass underneath,
that was all dirt. And then we'd use the pine
cones and we'd make, you know, different things to eat.
Was just so much fun. Like that is honestly, hands
down my favorite childhood memory. Justin yes, what was your
(02:09):
favorite playground equipment when you were a kid?
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Hey, thanks so much for asking. My favorite? I had
a couple. Do you remember those? I think that you
would call it a merry.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Go round, a chuck up spinning thing.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Well, it wasn't so much a chuck up thing. I'm
going to get to that in a sec. It was
the thing where you'd get I don't know, five or
ten kids sitting on it, and then one person would
hold the handrail and just run as fast as you
could and spin as fast as you could. And it
was just delightful to stand on that thing and push
(02:41):
it around in a circle as fast as you could.
I don't know if anyone got sick on it, but
super sou all the time. So we also had this
thing at a park near my house. It was kind
of like a little sphere and you could climb into
it and there was a handle in the middle that
you could spin the handle that was the vomitron.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Oh, that's disgusting, spin around.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
And also at the park where near where I grew
up in Niagara Park, just off Gilda Drive, there was
a park there and it had what felt at the
time to be the biggest slide in the world. Just
down the road from my grandma and grandpa in Cardigan
Street in Auburn, there was a park as well, just
next to Duck Creek and they had a slide. So
the big slide near where I drew up, it followed
(03:23):
the land as the land slid down, It just went
down the land, so you could always just get out
of the slide and put your feet on the ground,
whereas the one in anm Pops. It had the tallest
ladder of any slide I've ever seen in any playground
in history. It was huge. They were my favorites. Oh
and big swings, not the little playground swings like we
(03:43):
have now. Back in my day, I can't believe I
just said that we used to have swings and they
were so big that you couldn't reach the person as
they swung back to you because they were swinging so high.
We don't do any of that sort of stuff anymore.
And the reason that we don't have that sort of
playground whipment anymore is because people are worried that the risks. Well,
I think counsels are worried that somebody's going to get
(04:05):
sued because an arm will be broken, or a leg
will be broken, or somebody's going to get knocked unconscious
because a piece of steel hits them as this merry
go round spins around really fast. But here's the thing,
didn't really happen that much. Kids figured it out.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I remember a couple of kids breaking their arms on
the monkey bars when I was growing up. But when
you look at the number of children that went through
the school.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Or the hours of play on those monkey bars.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Exactly, it was such a minute minority. It wasn't just
a minority, it was tiny.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Okay, unplanned. Question, how serious is it when your child
breaks an arm? Like, is it that big of a deal?
Speaker 2 (04:43):
It's not.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
No, it's a story for the rest of your life. Like,
we really do worry about this stuff, and I'm not
sure that we're worried about the right kind of thing.
I want to talk about this idea of risky play.
Play that is risky is play that involves heights, that
involves speed, the potential for impact, play that involves independence
(05:05):
and just for find I'm going to throw and play
that involves tools. And the central point that I want
to make here is that when we grew up, it
wasn't called risky play.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
It was just played.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
It's exactly what it was. We've sanitized play. We've sanitized
the life, the learning, and the opportunity out of play.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
When I went to preschool, so I was four years old,
and I still have vivid memories of the workbench. It
was supplied with all the clamps that we needed the nails,
the hammers, and it was all there, so I could
hammer all the different recyclable items onto a piece of
wood and then take it home and show my mom
and dad proudly what I had made.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Parents are struggling so much with the idea of risky
play that the Canadian Pediatric Society has put a list
together of how we can teach parents to do risky
play at home. Wow, and I know there's a wow
factor there, but I also, based on the conversations that
I'm having in various halls and teaching rooms and conferences
around the country, I want to go through this list
(06:10):
with you. We have limited time for it, so I
am going to go quickly, but feel free to interject
wherever you want. They've highlighted how you can do risky
play at home.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
But here's the struggle though. There's no risky play anywhere allowed.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
That's why so is where it's got to happen.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
So parents follow suit, right.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Of course, but with the very best of intentions. We
just don't want our kids to get hurt. It's horrible
when you can get hurt, it really is. We had
a daughter who fell off It wasn't even a monkey bar,
but it was that kind of thing and she broke
her arm. We didn't realize for a few hours.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
It wasn't a few hours, okay, maybe half an hour.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
And you guess what, She's got a great story about
how she fell off while were down at the Vella
Drome show.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
By the time I saw her ten minutes later, because
I'd sent her to the car, her arm was completely.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Bowed right right, it was broken. It was ugly. Here's
how you encourage risky play at home. Ideally some of
the kids don't break a leg or break an arm,
but some of they might, and that's where the fun is.
Playing at height. The Canadian Pediatric Society says that means
that you give your children opportunities to climb and jump
and balance at height. A note there's no suggestion that
(07:16):
there needs to be soft fall or a rubber mat
underneath them.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
It's interesting again. I just had another visual. One of
the play equipment options at my school when I was
in grade one and two was this balancing beam. But
it wasn't a balancing being close to the ground like.
It was a full probably a meter and a half
off the ground like when I fell. I couldn't like
I didn't reach the height of the balancing beam.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I was doing that when I was a kid. Once
my dad said, look, it just didn't have fun. But
if you fall and break both your legs, don't come
running to me. Playing at speed that involves maybe riding
a bike at high speed, or sliding or running. We
used to do cardboard box sliding down steep hills with
the kids. We'd get like a refrigerated box, sit on
the box and just slide down this grassy hill. When
we were living in Woongong there was a great spot
(08:03):
for it, and we've also as the kids got old
and gone ice blocking so much fun. Sit on a
block of ice that you can buy from wherever you
buy wholesale ice. Sit on the block of ice and
slide down a grassy hill. Play involving tools, supervised activities
involving an axe, saw, knife, hammer, or ropes. I mean camping.
That's why kids love camping. Here's the next one that
(08:32):
they suggest. Play involving potentially dangerous elements, in other words,
playing near fire or water. I remember being on a
hike with the kids once and we found a waterfall
and just watching the kids scramble over these jagged rocks
near the base of the waterfall and thinking this is
so good. They're climbing over these jagged rocks and this
(08:52):
could go really badly. But here's the critical thing. They
take the risks that are appropriate for them and they
learn how to navigate and judge the risks. Rough and
tuble play so there's wrestling play, fighting, fencing with sticks,
play with risk for disappearing or getting lost. The Canadian
Pediatric Society say that exploring play spaces neighborhoods or woods
(09:15):
without adult supervision or in the case of young children
with limited supervision, like hiding behind the bushes, is good
for them. There are two others, play involving impacts, so
you could crash into something or someone, maybe repeatedly and
of course only for fun. And lastly, vicarious play. Vicarious
play is experiencing the thrill of watching other, often older children,
engaging in risky play. I love the list.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Another visual I went to my cousin's house one day
I probably was about eight, and she had a brand
new set of roller skates. The problem was she lived
at the top of this really steep driveway, so there
was nowhere to roll the skates.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
That's brilliant.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I had never used a pair of roller skates and
I spent probably three or four for hours trying to
master roller skating down the driveway.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
That's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I think my bum must have been so black and
blue by the end of that day.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I need to make a quick note. We do need
to make sure when we consider that list, that what
we're encouraging our children to do is developmentally appropriate. So
there's a great line that I picked up from Jonathan
Hates after Babel Substack. He said, you want your kids
to be as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible.
So we do need to still recognize that there are risks.
(10:33):
That's why it's called risky play, and it needs to
be developmentally appropriate. A four year old can't do what
a fourteen year old can, and we shouldn't encourage that.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I loved what you said before about the fact that
as we allow our children the opportunity to spread their
wings a little bit and engage in risky play, they
will take the risks that are appropriate for them. Yes,
and as adults, it's really important that we don't squash
that in a voice and push them to do things
(11:00):
beyond their capacity within reason.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
One other thing that I need to emphasize, and that's
this pushing point. We've got to allow our children the
option of saying no. So this is not about us
making them do risky play. This is about creating an
environment where they have the capacity to take risk. It's
about agency or autonomy. We need to be careful with pressure.
(11:26):
We didn't have adults pushing us to be risky when
we were kids. We just went and played case in point.
And I think I've shared this story before. Last Christmas,
we spent some time with my parents on the New
South walest Central Coast. My parents have a boat and
they have a donut that you can tie to, not
for eating, a donut that you can lay on and
lay behind the boat and zoom around. And our youngest Emily,
(11:48):
who at the time was nine, was terrified this was
risky for her. She's going to put a life jacket on,
hold on to the donut, and then get whipped around
the water and then.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Fall into jellyfish infested water.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
There are millions of big jellyfish in the water. And
so we put her on the donut and said, promise,
we're not going to knock you off. We just want
you to get used to it. She was happy to
do that if she had a sister on either side
of her, and the donut was big enough for the
three of them to lay there. And after about thirty
seconds she was like, I like it. And then she
started to give us directions faster, faster. She wanted the speed,
(12:23):
she wanted the impact, she wanted the thrill, she wanted
the risk. She just needed to acclimatize to it. Now.
She did not fall off. We made sure that while
we gave her a lot of fun, we kept it
just to a level where she could barely hang on.
But she hung on. The critical thing here is that
we are now going to go back there next year
because she's dying. Every time she gets the chance Poppy
(12:46):
wink and we go on the boat again. She's dying
to get on there. She still doesn't want to fall off,
but as she gets bigger, as she has more experience
with it, she will continue to push those boundaries until
she's delighted to fall off and hopefully there won't be
any jelly fish in the water.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
So you've got five tips for parents who are struggling
to engage in risky play.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Let me dive into these five things right before I do.
Research evidence shows some people are listening to this saying yet,
but I've got an anxious child. I can't do this
for them. Risky play, according to recent research, helps children
overcome anxiety disorders and the cognitive distortions that go along
with them.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Anyone who's done something hard knows the thrill that comes
from having achieved it, like you get to the other
side and you're just.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
You're pumped, yep, and anxious children they don't get pumped
until they've overcome it. So they see something that has
some uncertainty, they don't know how to tolerate it. They
do tend to interpret ambiguous situations quite negatively, and they
underestimate their ability to cope if the situation has some
level of uncertainty around it. In risky Play, kids practice
(13:56):
dealing with strong, ambiguous emotions. Because thrill and excitement are
also interpreted as fear and terror. They learn how to
cope with that. They learn how to deal with situations
that abound with uncertainty, and it shows them that they're
resilient and capable of coping when things go wrong. The
research shows that children with more opportunities for risky play
(14:17):
have lower internalizing symptoms that you would consider characteristic of
anxiety disorders. Just had to say that. So let's dive
into what we can do to encourage our kids to
be playing in ways that are good for them, that is,
that are risky see above. Number one, say yes, like
don't be the parent says, oh no, you can't do that.
Just say yes. Number two, be outdoors because outdoors lends
(14:40):
itself to risky play much more than being indoors on
carpet staring at a TV. Number three. Encourage sports and
rough and tumble play and time near water. Obviously, safety
does need to be a factor, but look for opportunities
to be outside and move your bod and number four
(15:01):
get rist screens. Number five, get out of the way.
Just get out of the way. Stop controlling. I don't
want to minimize the significance of breaking an arm, but
breaking arms are okay. It's of course it's painful. Of
course there's stress associated with it, but breaking an arm
is okay. The kids can take risks.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
A handful of years ago, our eldest convinced me to
jump out of a plane with her Yes, I may
have been saying what I thought might be my last
prayer that morning before I left to get in that bus,
and at the end of it, she asked me if
I was glad I did it, And the reality is
(15:40):
I wasn't right. I actually wasn't.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
I wasn't expecting it.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I didn't I didn't love the way my body felt
in that space. Does that mean that I'm completely risk averse. No,
There's plenty of things that I'm happy to do that
still leave me feeling really really anxious in the moment.
But I've worked out what my tolerance level is in
relation to what I'm willing to put myself through. I'm
(16:06):
still willing to do hard things, but there are some
things that I just know is not worth the payout.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yep. Yeah, And I think that's a really really good point.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
And so yeah, I just think we help our kids
to recognize there are some things that are worth pushing
through and there are other things that if this is
too much for you, that's okay. Yep.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Agency matters. The research is pretty clear when you let
your kids take risks, they become more physically developed, they
are more emotionally resilient, they develop more social skills, they're
better at risk assessment, they're more creative in terms of
the way they solve problems, their mental health improves, and
they have a sense of agency autonomy over their lives.
It's just so valuable. We really hope that you've enjoyed
(16:47):
the conversation today. I know we've gone over time. It's
such a great topic though, isn't it. The Happy Families
podcast is produced by Justin Rwland from Bridge Media. If
you'd like more information about making your family happy, we'd
love for you to join us at Happy families dot
com dot I U check out our product. It's called FELT.
It's part of the Happy Families membership. FELT stands for
fostering emotional learning Together. It's all available at happy families
(17:10):
dot com dot a he
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