Recent
Most read
Most shared
Why children need adventure in the playground
Play that involves an element of risk has been proven to help primary children cope with anxiety – and here’s how schools can deliver it
Grazed knees, ripped shirts and, let’s be honest, probably quite a few tears. Cast your mind back and you can probably think of a formative experience that happened on the school playground.
Away from the watchful gaze of a lunchtime supervisor, it’s the place where friendships are forged, limits are pushed and the unwritten rules of childhood engagement are learned and tested. It can be chaotic but for many child psychologists, not to mention children, it’s as important as the classroom.
Understandably, the importance of the playground has been a common post-pandemic narrative. After all, it feels like a no-brainer to suggest that children who have been confined to their homes for months would benefit from playing freely outdoors with their friends.
But according to recent research, the benefits of a particular brand of play - which involves children testing their own limits of what they feel comfortable with - can have a profound effect on anxiety and mental health in later life. Given the reported rise in childhood anxiety over the past 18 months, the research now seems especially pertinent.
More on play:
Helen Dodd is a professor of child psychology at the University of Exeter, and has a particular interest in what she terms “adventurous play”. Her 2020 article ”Adventurous play as a mechanism for reducing risk for childhood anxiety” draws on the existing research on which factors influence childhood anxiety, and suggests that activities that produce excitement in children can help them to cope with these issues in the future.
What is adventurous play?
So what exactly do we mean by adventurous play?
“Adventurous play is exciting and thrilling, where children experience a level of fear while they’re taking age-appropriate risks,” says Dodd, speaking ahead of an appearance at the E-ACT Ideas Conference on 7 October.
“Their palms are sweaty, their heart is racing, they have butterflies in their tummy; they experience these things, but in a playful, positive way,” she explains.
According to Dodd’s research, allowing children to experience these emotions in the context of play enables them to develop better coping mechanisms when faced with the same emotion in a “real-life” situation.
The idea that the adrenaline rush that is experienced hanging from the top of a climbing frame transfers to, say, the feeling of sitting your university finals may seem tenuous. However, Dodd’s research shows that this ability to manage emotions during play subsequently makes children less likely to develop clinical anxiety in later life.
“Because they’re playing at the edge of their comfort zone, they have to learn about uncertainty, and so they learn uncertainty itself isn’t anything to be scared of and they become more tolerant of it. They learn about feelings of arousal and they learn that they can cope,” she says.
“If we restrict children’s play, either by not giving them enough time to play or by not allowing them to take risks when they play, then we take away those learning opportunities.”
For Dodd, there needs to be a level of autonomy given to the child when it comes to play, and she suggests that school staff should not let their own fears dictate their behaviour.
“As adults, when we fear something it makes us feel anxious, and so we say ‘stop’. If we give the children a space, they’ll stop when it gets too high or it gets too fast,” she adds.
“Every time we jump in and stop them from doing it, we take away an opportunity for them to learn where the edge is for them.”
The childhood anxiety problem
Even prior to the pandemic, anxiety disorders were the most common mental health problem in young people, affecting 5 to 19 per cent of all children and 2 to 5 per cent of those under 12. According to Dodd, if these problems go untreated during early childhood, they can lead to depression in adolescence and adulthood.
During the past 18 months the mental health of young people has been a focus for schools, with social interaction dramatically reduced and opportunities to play, exercise and spend time outdoors limited.
“The evidence coming from multiple studies is that anxiety is high at the moment. We’ll never know whether that was as a result of Covid, because we don’t have a control group, but certainly it’s higher now than it was before,” she explains.
“I think we need to be really conscious of how little control children have had over their lives for the past 18 months. That’s the really nice thing about giving them opportunities to play freely is that the control is handed back to them for a little while - you know, ‘You’ve got the next half an hour you do whatever you want to do.’”
How can schools facilitate adventurous play?
In the context of the school setting, the idea of letting children find their own boundary between adventurous and full-blown terrifying might seem irresponsible, not to mention in conflict with a school’s duty of care.
So how can schools facilitate this type of play in a responsible way?
1. Risk-benefit analysis
Dodd suggests teachers conduct a risk-benefit analysis when it comes to these types of situation, weighing up any potential peril against opportunities for children to learn for themselves.
“Often as adults, particularly in situations where there’s a duty of care like in a school playground, we go with as little risk as possible,” Dodd explains.
“We don’t want anybody to get hurt. But in doing that we take away all of those possible benefits. Instead of thinking, ‘I want to make the risk as low as possible,’ it’s thinking about where there is risk, is there also a benefit and does that benefit outweigh that risk?
“So rather than jumping in and saying ‘stop’, you think whether they are learning something. Because at some point they’re going to be teenagers, and adults are not going to be supervising them the whole time, so they need to learn to make those decisions.”
2. Communicate with parents
The idea of risk-benefit analysis seems like common sense, but explaining this retrospectively to parents of injured children won’t come easily. Dodd advises that this policy is explained to parents early on.
“It’s really about emphasising the reasons for doing it and the benefits of doing so,” she says.
“It’s about letting parents know you’ve taken a conscious decision that you think children need a bit more space for their play, there needs to be a bit more autonomy, and we want to give them that and we want to show them that we trust them.”
3. Make sure play is child-led
When it comes to enabling these types of experiences, Dodd suggests that there is only so much school staff can do.
“It’s not about us as adults forcing children to do something that makes them feel scared,” she explains, “it’s about them playing at the edges of their comfort zone. That differs from one child to the next. because the edge of each child’s comfort zone is in a different place.
“To facilitate it, as adults, we need to take a step back and to trust children to assess the risks, and that means not jumping in and saying, ‘Stop that! Get down!’”
4. Support the risk-averse
The flip side of the previous point is that, while the impetus must come from the child, there are those who may benefit from some encouragement.
“There are children who have a more anxious temperament and won’t naturally expose themselves to these kinds of risks,” explains Dodd.
“It’s really important that we respect that, but I think that teachers and lunchtime supervisors could be looking out for opportunities to encourage a child. That’s not about pressure, but just letting them know that you’re there and you believe in them.
“For children with physical disabilities, think about how you make it happen for those kids. It varies from child to child, physically what they can and can’t do, but again it’s thinking creatively about where they can feel a bit of excitement.”
Professor Helen Dodd will be one of the speakers at this year’s E-ACT Ideas Conference, Mental health in schools - where next? in partnership with Tes. Find out more and register below:
