Why kids need to take more risks: science reveal benefits of wild, free play | Hacker News Reader

Why kids need to take more risks: science reveal benefits of wild, free play

nature.com

53 pointsrbanffy18 comments

Not discounting larger cultural forces and momentum at play, but I have to wonder how big a role inflated healthcare costs play in parents' level of protectiveness over their young children.

Even adjusted for inflation, a visit to the emergency room for a broken arm or a few stitches is a way different financial proposition today than it was in say 1988 when I was a pre-teen running amok, alone, within a 5 mile radius of home.

I know I have a dollar amount floating in the back of my head when I'm watching my kiddo cavort around in the playground or jumping between big rocks the same way that I did at his age. Is there mortal danger? Not at all.. Buuuuut, is he going to split his lip if he face plants on a leap? How many grand is that going to be, even with insurance? It figures into the mental calculus, even if we can ostensibly afford it. Lots of families probably cannot afford it so well. My family definitely wouldn't have been able to if health care costs were the same in the 80s as they are now.

Likely not at play since you see the decrease in free play across countries with public healthcare systems. As a Canadian I do not think about the cost of healthcare whatsoever. If my kid falls and breaks an arm, the cost is $15 which is one day of parking.

Broke my arm a couple years ago in the US - total cost for me out of pocket after insurance was around $5k.

> one day of parking

Unfortunately you really will be there the whole day.

Do we have issues with wait times, yes. However, the guy above you broke his arm and had to pay $5,000 AFTER insurance covered their portion.

I worked with a Canadian about 10 years ago that broke his arm while visiting family in Winnipeg during Christmas. He waited 2 or maybe 3 full days to have it set and get a cast with no luck in seeing a doctor and finally drove across the border to have it done in the US. He was 60 or so and when he didn't even seem upset at that happening! That really opened my eyes on "free" healthcare.

N of 1 stories don't really work as I could easily find a ton of terrible stories of why the private system in the states is bad for people.

The Canadian system (or any public system) gets a bad rap for wait times, but it's not like everyone is just walking around with open wounds and broken bones here. I work in a hospital, and if you come in and need an MRI urgently, you get it. If it can wait, you wait. We aren't fully public, and if you want a private MRI next day you can pay for it (and in fact, the last time I compared local prices vs prices in Montana, we were cheaper).

The news has gone to 11 with the fear mongering since the 1990s and fear mongering about your kids in danger is the most profitable.

FWIW, my kid always wanted to go to the playground when she was a youngster. When she hit around 11, she was no longer interested. Computer took over.

Another side effect of the healthcare cost is the liability for the owner/ maintainer of the play space as naturally parents would want to offload the cost of the treatment by seeking a lawsuit.

An interesting quote from the article: “this pattern of risky play as a protective factor against mental-health issues was stronger for children from lower-income households than for those from higher-income households.”

I wonder if being an overprotective parent stems from the desire to use their children as benchmarks for their own success?

Very nice. Now start publishing papers which are the result of wild free play.

I had a paper rejected from nature after 5 revisions and two years. It ended up as the top paper ever in a second tier journal. Two extension papers from other groups on areas that we flagged as possible future extensions did make it in Nature last I checked.

Citation needed.

Could they take those risks in a controlled environment? The fact that it's controlled could be hidden. Video games could be a good substitute?

You're going to like this article about The Land, in Wales:

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/europe...

(https://archive.is/3Jp3W)

I'm not sure the parents are necessarily to blame here.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/22/us/mother-arrested-missing-so...

It's very location dependent regardless of the laws, I spent the holidays in eastern europe (large cities) and saw hordes of kids playing around in the snow, even kids under 10 playing without supervision, I'm back in the west and I only see groups of fat kids smoking vapes, eating junk and doomscrolling on public benches, I wish I was exaggerating... it's so depressing. idk what kind of future we're training them for but I think they'll struggle hard in life

10 is really old to be calling the cops on. My kids is 8 and we expecting her to walk to school alone this year like many kids.

But the lack of sidewalk and the description as a place “no on walks” is a bit more problematic.

We definitely have roads like that and would be horrified if my kid was walking along it — and the cops picking them up would be probably appropriate

But arresting the parents is over reaction; kids do stupid things, even when taught well. And there was a guardrail.

Today I learned that if I raised my kids today like I did in the early ‘90s, I’d probably be on death row.

In the summer my son same age as the kid in the news story would leave the house after breakfast and some days we wouldn’t see him but for occasional run in the house to grab a snack. I had no idea where he was half the time and we literally lived around a gator and snake infested woods and swamp areas.

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