Challenges in Children’s Play: Is it Worth the Risk?

Playgrounds provide a safe environment for children to grow in confidence, abilities and self-esteem while honing their social and gross motor skills. In fact, childcare centres in Australia often incorporate playtime into their educational plan. Most people, however, when looking back on their own childhoods, remember playtime riddled with challenges and risk that have helped shape them as individuals. As parents, if you’re wondering why children seek challenges and risks during play and if it’s okay to allow it, Creative Childcare explains further:

Risky and Challenging Plays

Early education centres implement learning opportunities during playtime through a variety of ways.

• Loose parts play - where children are provided with items like pipes, milk crates, wooden boxes and logs
• Supervised cooking - where children cook damper in fire pits while supervised by educators. This activity also helps them respect the power and learn the value of fire.
• Climbing and jumping activities - where children use climbing apparatus in non-traditional ways to challenge their physical skills
• Excursions - where children can explore the different resources that nature provides

On their own, these activities can be quite risky and challenging, as children are naturally very curious. However, when done with the proper supervision as part of child care in Australia, they are slowly guided in these situations, allowing them safely explore to their heart’s content.

The Benefits of Risky Play

In the paper, Managing Risk in Play Provision, by the Tasmanian Catholic Education Commission, they stated that “risk-taking is an essential part of children’s play. Managing that risk is the key to providing opportunities that support growth and development and keep children safe from unreasonable risk and injury. The balancing of these two is vital for our children’s health and development.” (Allen and Rapee, 2005 cited in Sanseter, E. and Kennair, L. 2011)

Dr Anne Kennedy further discussed risky play for children at length in an article published in the Putting Children First Issue 31. She said that the “...benefits for children from these requirements are reduced if child care professionals use them to limit what they provide in the way of interesting and challenging environments and experiences. The ‘cotton wool’ approach can result in over-restrictive limitations on children’s right to play, experiment, explore, and to extend themselves within a stimulating, yet safe environment.”

Life will always be full of risk, and by providing your children with the opportunities to participate in challenging play in a learning environment, we allow them to develop important life skills such as measured risk-taking and problem-solving.

At Creative Childcare in Australia , we recognise the importance of risky play and ensure that our students have a safe learning environment where they can be free to participate in and experience challenging situations. Contact us today.