Balancing Outdoor Risky Play and Injury Prevention in Childhood Development
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Of course. "injuries" don't matter, only serious and fatal ones do. A scratch is nothing and is healed in a couple of days. Even breaking a leg should not be considered serious. It's annoying, esp. for the parents, but it's in no way life-threatening.
Although I'm sure it has happened, it seems unlikely that any kind of play in a playground could result in serious injury or death. Let the kids play outside. And don't force them to put a coat in cold weather if they don't want to! Let them decide!
I think more important than the setting is ensuring they know how to play safely. Third most common cause of death is accidental self inflicted injuries. A lot of those are falls.
I'm in the middle of this right now with a 2 year old. Allowing your child to make decisions you disagree with has many down stream consequences, like what food they eat, what time they go to bed, how much screen time they watch, whether they sit at the table to eat.
How's that gonna go when it's time say "don't force them to do their homework, let them decide!"?
It's not about the coat, though the coat can be a matter of life or death in the case of a car accident or the sudden unexpected incapacitation of the parent, it's about following instructions and setting boundaries and being able to make the necessary decisions as a parent.
Kids being out and running into emotional challenging situations allows them to learn and deals with emotions & anxiety are very important for later life.
My friends and I would ride our bikes or walk everywhere we wanted during the day from 11/12 on. We would ride to a pharmacy weekly and get a snack or a small item for my mom.
Compared to playgrounds when I was a child in the 80s, they were much safer, there was no sand, only that black bouncing floor (which might be toxic) and above all there was very little to do.
Same when we visited our friends in Toulouse.
It was much worse than the playgounds we have in Hong Kong that at least have decent slides, climbing bars, etc...
One thing that I've noticed is missing from both countries though are swings. We have them in Hong Kong but instead of just being a flat piece of wood on which you can stand, sit and do other things, it's more of a safety seat like you'd see in a baby chair.
Do you have any reason to believe this?
Israel has a tech-driven/advanced military but is still using hundreds of thousands of troops in Gaza. Ukraine / Russia use even more against each other.
The Royal Navy is currently unable to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Red Sea because of staffing issues, despite the UK's $70 billion defence budget. [1]
I'd recommend watching Perun's YouTube channel if you're interested in specific labour requirements of militaries [2]
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/12/aircraft-carrier... [2] https://www.youtube.com/@PerunAU
But they're fighting mostly unarmed civilians, and the odd guy with an RPG, rather than any nation state military.
I went to school alone since I was 7. As far as I know in much of the US people would probably sue you if your kid went alone.
In my town there are certainly young kids (i.e. elementary school age) who walk or bike to school on their own. Sometimes there are parents walking with them, but I think they do it because they enjoy a walk with their child rather than any real concern for safety. There are crossing guards at walkways where kids will need to cross busier roads.
In other areas, schools are just too far away to walk, or there are other difficulties such as major roadways with a lot of traffic. Then kids ride a bus or parents take them.
You need to move to a place where unsupervised outdoor play at young ages is encouraged. These places do in fact exist in the US.
The common reaction to this is that you can't just get up and move your family. We'll this is still a choice and we all set priorities on what is important.
Also, there is no utopia so the "best place to raise a family" in the US might have other negatives, you just need to prioritize.
We live in such a neighborhood and it has been excellent for kids. They can walk or bike to the park in less than a minute, there are multiple playgrounds and large fields to run around.
…but replace minerals with children
My children had whittling knives from age 5, built their own fires when we went on walks, could explore into the small woodlands on their own soon after and walked home from school at age 7. None of this would have been socially acceptable in a UK city but was pretty much standard in Oslo. Our children still feel safe and also feel confident doing things themselves. Our level of stress about our children seems to be lower than my friends elsewhere, who have a risk avoidance mindset, living in a society that highlights any potential risk as to be totally avoided and bad parenting if a child is exposed to any risk.
Occasionally you hear stories from the US about parents being arrested for letting their children walk down the street alone or play in the local park by themselves and that seems crazy to most of the rest of the world.
Child in the UK now - "whats a tree?"
Growing up in Germany myself, I also feel that this trend is getting noticable here.
I have no data on this, but I feel like safer cars lead to higher speeds and therefore perceived higher risk from a pedestrian/children point of view. The fact that there are more cars and they are bigger, while speed enforcement is basically non-existent (because freedom) are probably also doing their part.
Unfortunately, there's on policy that I otherwise really like, congestion charging, that contributes to faster average car speeds.
Personally, I find that Singapore's prevalence of pay-per-minute car shares (because buying a car is so expensive) coupled with the inexperienced drivers who tend to use them causes a lot more risky behavior.
It's an awesome system, if all you care about is keeping traffic flowing. It does exactly what it was supposed to be doing. Works beautifully.
No, because congestion charging keeps traffic flowing nicely at all times. Congestion would otherwise slow innercity traffic down to a crawl at best and a jam at worst.
> Personally, I find that Singapore's prevalence of pay-per-minute car shares (because buying a car is so expensive) coupled with the inexperienced drivers who tend to use them causes a lot more risky behavior.
I don't see that many shared cars on the road to make much of a difference? They certainly exist, of course. When I hear specific complaints it's often often about cab (or grab) drivers, and occasionally about bus drivers imported from PRC.
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In any case, here I'm not objecting against anyone's specific bad behaviour, but mostly that we have so many stroads; and that cars drive fast (even the legal speed limit is very life threateningly dangerous to pedestrians).
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad
I mostly like the walking experience inside of HDB complexes, with the void decks, little shops, and everything being pedestrianised and open to the general public. But the big stroads in between them are deadly.
I knew someone who worked with designing playgrounds here in Norway, and his focus was on this. He called it subjective safety vs objective safety.
The idea was to maximize objective safety while allowing the kids a lot of room to explore the subjective safety.
This could be say a climbing wall which was tall enough to be challenging, but ensuring the equipment and ground was designed and maintained[1] such that there was no risk of permanent injury should a kid fall from the top.
As most kids love a challenge this induced them to play freely in a natural way, which lead to other benefits including social aspects like reduction of bullying.
[1]: https://www.bsigroup.com/contentassets/fd0e8cd7dd174774890cd...
I debate that this is possible. You can minimize the dangers (like having no solid rock underneath, but sand), but with bad luck(and skill) even a small fall can break a neck.
But it is very important, that children indeed fall often, so they learn how to fall without hurting themself. It is up to us to provide a place that is a reasonable environment for it. But kids should also climb trees in a forest - and you cannot clear every ground. Life comes with risk. But if you remove all risk for them, they won't be prepared for the risks they cannot avoid.
Sure, in practice. But the goal and intention of the standards for playground safety here is that there is no risk of permanent injury.
Why is the goal not realistic, to minimize the risk?
Even if the whole playground would be made of soft foam - then still 2 kids could bump into each other and one loose its eye.
because "Only 2 out of 200,000 kids will be permanently maimed" is a harder sell to the public than the impossible "Our goal is zero injuries.".
This I would sign, too.
"Goal and intention ... there is no risk of permanent injury."
This not. If you design proper and guide the small children enough, you can achieve no permanent injuries with some luck (for a specific playground over some time), but you cannot rule it out, that eventually something very bad might happen and this would just give parents false security.
I have seen this actually quite often. Young parents who assume, that the playground is totally safe, so they let then children do really risky things without realizing the danger - and this is dangerous. I mean children should do risky things and other people(mainly the grandparents) freak out when they see, what my small kids are allowed to do. But as a climber and parkour enthusiast - I guide and assist them first, till I know, they can handle this particular new situation and I try to raise their awareness of what they are capable and when they should rather stop or shout for help. And of course, I am near, so I can assist in critical situations. But I know that accidents will happen. And they did, but luckily nothing serious so far (because I was there). But I know, that I am not in 100% control of the situation all the time, just not possible. But if I would be scared because of the remaining <0.1% - my nervousness would affect them and make them insecure. Fear makes knees shaky ... and then they fall.
The aim of this standard is first and foremost to prevent accidents with a disabling or fatal consequence, and secondly to lessen serious consequences caused by the occasional mishap that inevitably will occur in children's pursuit of expanding their level of competence, be it socially, intellectually or physically.
This part of EN 1176 specifies general safety requirements for permanently installed public playground equipment and surfacing. Additional safety requirements for specific pieces of playground equipment are specified in subsequent parts of this standard.
This part of EN 1176 covers playground equipment for all children. It has been prepared with full recognition of the need for supervision of young children and of less able or less competent children.
"This part" in the above refers to EN 1176-1.
[1]: https://nobelcert.com/DataFiles/FreeUpload/EN%201176-1%20(20...
Sounds very reasonable to me, with no unrealistic goals. I think we should be careful to not argue about semantics ... my point above was just about the absolut statement of "no risk of permanent injury should a kid fall from the top". The way you written it (I did not follow the link) - it said 100% safe. If you meant "very close to 100%", what is what people usually do with natural language, then there is no disagreement.
Well I did write it using using natural language and not a programming language, so that can be taken as a given.
And formal language for regulations are also not natural language and accuracy matters there, so I assumed the quote above from your friend was more in this style. Let's leave it at that :)
Some parents just want to let the kids loose on the playground and then {do something} completely absorbed from reality, without raising the eyes and taking a look.
But what I meant was for example parents encouraging their toddlers to do unsave stuff. Like riding down a steep slide, where they could fall off left or right from it. (And some toddlers apparently did fall out - because now there is no more slide, it really wasn't a safe toy for all kids, but slightly older kids 3+, could ride it without problems).
I spoke to some of those parents and they really were not aware of the dangers, they just assumed a slide is made save for all kids. And they were thankful for the warning.
In group discussions around testing, security & scalability the maximalist approaches are really hard to argue against in meetings.
The person who objects to the max safety approach can easily come off as an uncaring gambler whilst the advocate comes off as idealistic at worst.
There was an 11 year old that died last year, but that was in a professional climbing hall; I'm not sure what happened but they were supposed to be secured. But that was a 13 meter drop, and the fifth incident like that in a 30 year timespan.
And there was a 4 year old that died after falling three meters from a bouncy castle in an indoor play area; the owners of the venue were pulled up on the unsafe conditions in 2013, but due to various mistakes they only got the report nearly a year later and did not remove the dangerous thing until the child fell off and died.
When you are a child you need a LOT of bad luck to achieve that (in contrast to being an adult), if the playground is properly designed.
Yes you could fall and get hurt. You learned to not do that.
There is no reversing the process, the "upgrades" must continue all over the world. The grown ups aren't thinking at all, they just do what the other kids do. Stuff like conquer markets.
Maybe if you lift Karin over your head, throw her onto the rubber tiles and say: If this was concrete I wouldn't have done that.
It's quite brilliant. Very small children up to almost teenagers can play on the same structure and challenge themselves in appropriate ways for their skill, because of the initial skill threshold in reaching the more risky parts.
I'm the first to admit that even as an adult I have had fun on those, by climbing the exteriors and leaping across long gaps. I hope it benefits my children that I can play with them that way.
I used to walk half a mile to the shops at age 7 or 8 to complete an errand, people left their children in pushchairs (or dogs) outside of shops etc. I wish I knew what changed the UK for the worse.
However, reading that I had a involuntary reaction of disgust just thinking about it. I certainly wouldn't dream of doing it with my own kids and suspect the reaction would be to call the police if I did.
"Did you hear [child Y] tried to get pulled into a van?"
And it was talked about like a casual fact-of-life hazard which just happens sometimes.
In the 1990s I had an absurd amount of freedom to roam, walked myself to school from age 6 and had very little oversight. It wasn't safe, not by a LONG way, as the area was very poor and rough.
It did give me both hugely valuable life tools and an adulthood of inappropriate anxiety and hightened response to small threats.
I feel like we should work to give children the skills without the threat being so high that it causes long-term issues in adulthood. Children need safety to grow well.
I guess it depends on the city? We used to cycle with my friends everywhere when I grew up in the UK, and build dens and treehouses in the forest. I'm only 25 now.
I totally agree on it being an important experience though. Independence and exploration are absolutely key to how I have turned out, I think.
There is so many things you can do in the home as a parent to encourage kids to take controllable risks. My oldest was helping his mother with knife-work in the kitchen from as early as 3. I also removed the enclosure net from the trampoline in our backyard. I buy bicycles for my kids as early as possible. I rough-and-tumble with my kids on an almost daily basis.
Of course there are limits. We try to keep it age appropriate, around some dangerous areas (fire, deep water, the road) we always keep them supervised. We teach them about the dangers. We teach them how to manage the risks.
Luckily my brother-in-law also removed the enclosure net on their backyard trampoline after he saw that my kids were OK jumping on an open trampoline. So it seems our attitude is starting to have a positive affect on the families around us.
Anyway, here are the benefits:
1) More freedom, as they can get on the trampoline from any side instead of just the entrance. This Makes for more interesting games on/around the trampoline.
2) Easier for a parent to get to them when necessary.
3) I also jump on the trampoline.
4) Without the net, there is more to the trampoline than just a place to jump (ties in with point 1). E.g. We had our family dinner on the trampoline more than once.
5) The increased risk makes it more fun. Kids have and enjoy adrenaline too.
To answer the drawbacks (increased risk):
1) I also got hurt falling from a trampoline once as a teen, that was because I behaved the way a teen boy would.
2) The kids know where the dangerous parts of the trampoline is (i.e. near the sides).
This is assuming that being careful and finding the limits of a dangerous activity without being injured is a skill that needs practice, but that doesn't seem like too much of a stretch.
You could test this by seeing if kids who had trampoline enclosures were less likely to hurt themselves seriously as an adult.
Kamq also makes a good point.
We have an enclosed one, and the kids love it, because it allows them to play games with balls on the trampoline.
The use of "risk" here is not the one I'm used to; the way pretty much everyone in risk management uses it is the product of likelihood and severity. I understand that they need different words for "hazard a child can deal with" and "hazard a child can't deal with", but the work "risk" is already taken.
Is there a name for this type of question, which is framed in such an ingenuous way that almost any reasonable answer to it will make that person seem like an intolerant and uptight monster who doesn't tolerate their small kids playing around sex-workers giving a punter a handjob in the bushes?
OK now I get it. Virtue signalling.
This presumes that this is all happening out on the streets, not in some specialized area where sex workers are in the privacy of their home/business.
I challenge any sane place that allows homeless to sleep in kids parks as a safe place to live.
I have never lived in a city where the argument you're attempting could be made in good faith.
Maybe we have a different environment imagined. I was talking about rather rich central Europe, where you never really see more than 5 homeless people at once. Sex workers on the street are limited to certain areas and times of day. Outside these times they can only meet customers inside. So kids living in areas nearby are normally not influenced by sex work.
Sorry if you feel trolled, but it seems I couldn't imagine what a shithole you guys seem to be living in.
Yes, it is called trolling - please don't feed the trolls.
A child playing football could readily disturb a sleeping homeless person or upset the commerce between sex workers & their clients.
Neither interaction would be pleasant for a child - and both could easily become unsafe.
I lived in a very nice neighborhood in a large East Coast US city, and all but the "sex trade" where things my child was exposed to daily. Hiding my child from them or not letting him walk to school with a friend because of them didn't feel particularly useful, so learning how to navigate that environment was the approach we took.
You can still do the former if you find a proper Scout group and the latter if you live in the right area. But it's a shame you need to actively look for these opportunities now.
Not saying it isn't safe by perpetuating the worry, but this is what happens.
Moving to Norway was not required, just needed to get out of big cities
As a Norwegian I would say something that is a big trait of Norwegian/Scandinavian culture that seperates it from many other parts of the world other than being very high trust societies, is independency. Young people get very independent at a young age. And parents don't meddle in their lives to the same extent as in many other countries. Politics also enables this by giving grants and loans to students, which makes the majority of people economically independent from their parents at 18/19.
Can you elaborate on these grants and loans? What are they for? When do they start?
If you get accepted to a University, you apply and you'll get equivalent of 13-14k usd every year of study to cover living expenses.
Up to 40% of it gets converted to a grant, depending on how many of your classes you passed. The loan is also under very favorable conditions, interest free while studying, very low interest after finished, usually paid over 20 years, and you can postpone payment up to 36 times (3 years) whenever you want.
Not enough to be worth it in my opinion, the dark winters are too much man
Folks have some trouble where I am, and I have 'days' during the winter. Sure, they are 4.5 hours long in December and the sunlight is poor, but I technically have days.
That said, I'd be willing to try it for a couple of years, if anything just for the experience. Dark winters are a lot and the weather can be pretty brutal with ocean storms and wind and stuff, but I think clear winter nights would be beautiful more regularly than Trondheim.
Comparable statement from Scotland.[1]
Kids need riskier play, so that the military can get more recruits. Only about 23% of American kids qualify for the US military.[2] With a war with either Russia or China coming up, we'll need more fresh meat for the grinder.
[1] https://www.playscotland.org/resources/print/Risky-Play-Leaf...
[2] https://docs.house.gov/meetings/PW/PW07/20230511/115823/HHRG...
The links you provide, as far as I can skim, don't weigh in on the tradeoff.
Is this still the protocol among anglophone children, or has it changed during the intervening decades?
Don't worry, all the damage is mental and won't manifest itself until I'm middle aged.
Wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment and far too many kids these days are growing up raised entirely by electronics.
I recall my parents shutting off the electronics and forcing us outside, which was a huge boon. My dad was also always down to go on adventures and get dirty.
Climbing a climbing frame? Surely fine. A ladder? Most likely. Climbing a tree? Probably fine, though also depends. Climbing onto a steep roof? Uh oh. Soloing El Cap? I'll leave that to grown ups.
I think the paper addressed this but what we consider risky play now is so sanitized. I am pretty sure climbing a tree is more than fine even 30 years ago.
Kids breaking their legs all the time falling off of things has never been a problem at any point in history. This suggests that no effort is needed to ensure that it isn't a problem in the future. You don't need protections against things that don't ever happen.
So while I agree with what you are arguing for, I don't think your argument is valid by itself.
I broke my leg once in my youth, it wasn't that bad. Edit: I should remark though, that this was a very clean break, some it might not be representative of the average broken bone.
If there were ever to be any kind of “meat grinding” war, it would be escalated to aircraft, drones, and long range missiles pretty quickly I think, with a relatively small number of infantry losses through active combat.
There are also a significant number of people who believe that risky play (or the lack of it) is resulting in mental health issues in today’s young adults, who are finding themselves inexperienced in dealing with feelings of fear, unfamiliar with perseverance and delayed gratification, and are also as you have noted, physically out of shape.
Just because “teenagers being fitter” would benefit the military does not mean that’s the purpose of encouraging riskier play.
We have an order of magnitude more combat aircraft of all classes than both of these nations combined. We have more AH-64s that are allocated just to training than both of these nations have helicopters in active service combined.
Ukraine is already giving Russia's AD systems a run for their money using our hand-me-downs from 30 or more years ago. Their aircraft have no stealth technology, ancient avionics, ancient targeting systems, last-generation anti-radiation missiles.
Russian AD systems stand zero chance against modern SEAD doctrine: we can see this in effect every time Ukraine uses decoy-based saturation attacks combined with cruise missiles. They simply do not have enough capable batteries to sustain a meaningful air defense when faced with a financially-superior adversary. We have tens of thousands of AGM-88 HARMs in stock: Russia has less than 2000 estimated S-300/S-400 acquisition radars.
Nuclear weapons are Russia's only real military trump card; Russia would cease to exist if confined to conventional munitions in a "peer" conflict. There exists exactly zero chance we end up in a Ukraine style meat grinder, we're deploying nuclear weapons long before that happens.
Also: Ukraine isn't engaged in total war and has no ability to wage it. The United States would (and has in past conflicts) engage in strategic bombing campaigns on absolutely every single manufacturing facility, every supply chain, in every complicit nation. In a US-Russia or US-China conflict, Iran doesn't get to sell drones or any other munitions without receiving 40 tons of JDAMs on their manufacturing facilities.
It depends on which country it is and how many of them there are. China and the Soviet Union were both helping Vietnam, for example.
TL;DR 40 tons of JDAMs are not enough to achieve anything lasting.
I can still remember watching original video of a laser guided bomb/missle hitting the exact right spot to get to the depths of the target to later cause massive damage.
How many days on station do you think an Aircraft carrier would make it in the baltic before it's torpedoed to the bottom of the sea?
Haven't you heard? Ukraine needs 500.000 more units of meat for the grinder. Russia are likewise looking for some huge number.
What good do MBTs do in isolation against attack helicopters with 15km-range ATGMs?
MBTs do not have sufficient AA or ECM capability ever. Either a specialty formation is required or something carrier sized to have a chance.
Their existence is the old strategy of demolition and suppression of infantry. (At the last of which they do not quite succeed.)
That's not an escalation, it's a cooling off.
First, these kinds of remote attacks don't take territory and therefore have sharply limited impact on the conflict. The ceiling on what they can accomplish is very low.
Second, they are cheaper and lower-risk for the attacking party, representing a lower level of commitment to the conflict. The potential for loss to the attacker is also very low.
Moving from a high-investment, high-risk, high-reward strategy to a low-investment, low-risk, low-reward strategy is hard to describe as an "escalation".
> Naively it seems to me that aircraft, drones, and long range missiles could do more harm to non military parts of a country compared to a foot army.
You're not alone. I have read that many people in the West were genuinely confused as to how the Tutsi genocide could have been accomplished with machetes. But foot armies are more than capable of inflicting whatever level of destruction you have in mind.
> The powerful effect of incentive plans (independent of quotas) was documented in an older study of Army guidance counselors.22 A key responsibility of guidance counselors is to channel applicants into the Army’s priority occupations. During the period under study, guidance counselors were under an incentive plan that offered counselors additional points for selling a high-priority occupation. The study found that simply offering five more incentive plan points for selling a particular occupation was more than twice as effective as offering an enlistment bonus to a recruit. That is, it was more effective to give the seller (the guidance counselor) an incentive to “sell” the occupation than it was to give the buyer (the recruit) an incentive to “buy” the occupation.
Nice to know that government funded studies show tricking people is more effective than convincing or bargaining with them in good faith
Research has indicated that Americans are progressively becoming more risk adverse, obese, and more injury prone over time. If only 23% of Americans qualify for military service now that number will become much smaller in the future. The potential rarity of viable recruits could become a new unexpected driver of personal wealth as military service becomes a new form wealthy exceptionalism available only to those gifted few.
There is no way this incentive structure leads to honesty for recruiter or upward mobility for the recruit
Huh? Don't they say that those bonuses work really well? So that's a lot of reason to use them, ain't it?
To me, it seems more like the obvious-with-hindsight observation that when you delegate your side of the negotiations to someone else (the guidance counselor) it's not enough to offer a good deal to the counterparty, you also need to motivate your own negotiator.
E.g. one possible explanation for the observed effect is that the guidance counselors without incentive plan points simply failed to mention the enlistment bonus, rendering it ineffective.
Some cursory research says that soldiers might be safer than average citizens. https://www.army.mil/article/260633/soldiers_are_safer_than_... (No clue whether that source is any good.)
So it doesn't look like soldier is a particularly 'life and death' profession in the US compared to the rest of the country; even though the stereotype of soldiering being dangerous exists.
"Second, the services should offer more people enlistment bonuses and increase the dollar amounts of those bonuses. Research shows that enlistment bonuses expand the supply of recruits overall and have an especially large effect when targeted to recruits who choose to train in critical specialties"
And the paragraph immediately preceding that one:
"An important aspect of recruiter management is an incentive system that provides recruiters with incentives to be productive. Research shows that these incentive systems affect recruiter productivity in terms of the quality, number, and timing of enlistments.20 Recruiters are incentivized to increase effort when these plans are designed properly, but the plans can have perverse unintended effects if not designed well. For example, one study found that Army recruit screening was poorer at the end of the recruiting month, when recruiters are incentivized to meet their monthly recruiting missions."
Now whether they did so or not I don’t know. I hope not because it is the sort of thing that works in the short term and drastically undermines trust in the long term.
[1] https://recruiting.army.mil/Portals/15/Documents/Forms%20and...
Dan John, in Intervention, talks about how a lot of movement patterning is developed during youth, and thus encourages a broad range of activities. This includes learning to tumble.
What happens on the playground has way more steps separating it from enlistment criteria then any of those. It would be like counting on 5th order effects working just right.
Your country's war machine, right?
I believe my country is most often the aggressor in the wars it has participated in. Without a big enough stick, aggression for material gain is a worse gamble.
I'm not saying no military is needed, but it has become the proverbial hammer.