New from the University of Exeter and the University of British Columbia shows that children who have more opportunities for outdoor adventurous play tend to experience better physical and mental health, along with stronger social and cognitive development.
Activities previously deemed ordinary parts of childhood such as climbing trees, racing bikes down hills, splashing in streams and swinging across monkey bars have fallen out of favor recently in the interest of safety. But new from the University of Exeter and the University of British Columbia shows that children who have more opportunities for outdoor adventurous play tend to experience better physical and mental health, along with stronger social and cognitive development.
Published in the journal PLOS One, the study reviewed evidence from 74 studies worldwide involving children ages 3 to 12. Researchers examined the relationship between adventurous play and six areas of health and development: physical health, mental health and well-being, aggression, social development, cognitive development, and children's ability to assess and manage risks.
Adventurous play, sometimes called risky play, involves exciting activities that allow children to experience manageable challenges and uncertainty. Examples include climbing trees, playing on heights, riding bikes fast downhill, exploring natural spaces, using age-appropriate tools and engaging in rough-and-tumble play.
These activities may look dangerous to adults, but they also give children opportunities to test their abilities, solve problems and learn what their bodies can do.
The researchers found that access to environments supporting outdoor adventurous play was associated with better health and developmental outcomes. They also found that children who could move around independently, without constant adult supervision, tended to be more physically active.
Keeping children safe is an obvious priority for parents, schools and communities. But somewhere along the way, the desire to eliminate risk has sometimes meant eliminating valuable childhood experiences, too.
Monkey bars offer a simple example. A child climbing across them develops strength, coordination, balance and body awareness. At the same time, the child must decide how far to reach, when to move and whether they have the strength to continue. If they struggle, they learn about their limits. If they fall in a properly designed play area, they may learn to approach the challenge differently next time.
Similar lessons happen when children climb trees, ride bikes over uneven ground or explore a new outdoor environment. They learn to judge situations, solve problems, cope with uncertainty and recover from setbacks.
These experiences may also support emotional development. Children who are allowed to take reasonable risks can practice managing fear, building confidence and developing independence. Rather than having an adult solve every problem, they get opportunities to make decisions for themselves.
Helen Dodd, a professor at the University of Exeter and director of its Outdoor Play Research Centre, emphasizes the importance of finding the right balance:
"If we deny children the opportunity to engage in the sort of play that previous generations took for granted, we take away rich learning opportunities linked to children's health and development, ultimately affecting some of the key issues we see around us today.
"Of course, we all want to keep our children safe, but if we focus only on keeping children safe and remove the opportunity for them to explore risks in their play, we are doing them a disservice.
"It's important to find a balance and it's not a question of doing a certain amount of risky play but rather ensuring that in children's lives, there are opportunities for them to play in a way that allows them to benefit from exploring risks. Children need opportunities to lead their own play and to make mistakes."
The goal isn't to expose children to unnecessary danger. It's to recognize the difference between eliminating hazards and eliminating every challenge.
Parents don't need to abandon common-sense safety measures to give children more freedom. Instead, they can look for ways to make challenging play possible within reasonable boundaries.
That might mean visiting a playground with climbing structures, encouraging children to explore a nature trail, teaching them to ride a bike on progressively more challenging routes or allowing them to work through age-appropriate physical challenges without immediately stepping in.
The important thing is to distinguish between a genuine, unacceptable hazard and a manageable risk that helps a child learn.
As Dodd explains: "More research is needed in this area because we only know risky play and positive health outcomes are linked, but we don't necessarily know cause and effect. That's the type of research we're interested in taking forward at the Outdoor Play Research Centre, to address those gaps, build better science, implement policy and shift society's understanding of risk in children's play."
