Benefits of Risky Play

According to the B.C. online collaborative project outsideplay.ca, risky play can “have many different shapes, but always involves the thrill and excitement of testing yourself and finding out what happens.”

That includes playing rough and tumble – at heights, at high speeds, with dangerous tools or elements or with a chance of getting lost. Research shows risky play is exhilarating for kids, helps them learn to manage risk and improves their motor and spatial skills.

“I think there’s such a big, big emphasis on raising the perfect child and making sure that our child has access to music lessons and sports lessons, skating, swimming – all of those critical, tangible skills that parents are on some level expected to cultivate in their children that we lose out on giving our kids the chance to develop some of those soft skills: the opportunity to problem-solve and teamwork and develop genuine relationships with other kids just throughout the process of peer play.”

Parents are encouraged to ask open ended questions to get their children thinking about their environment in a new way.

Using phrases like, ‘Hey, have you tried this? How could you get up on to that rock in a different way? Can you do something a little bit different with that? “Stimulates their imagination and curiosity to try new things and problem solve.

Putting the risk back into play: the benefits of being less protective