Do you ever feel like modern parenting is a juggling act of playdates, deadlines, and expensive childcare? It’s enough to make you wonder if a simpler solution might be found in the past. One where kids happily entertained themselves and parents got so much more done.
If you grew up in the 1970s, you were probably a free-range kid. Your days were filled with exploring creeks and abandoned lots, with the only rule being to come home when the streetlights came on.
There were no cell phones, no scheduled playdates and no parents hovering to solve your squabbles. You accepted that a scraped knee was nothing a plaster and a quick sprint back outside couldn’t fix.
But by today’s standards, that kind of freedom might be seen as negligent parenting. We’ve traded independence for constant supervision, creating a generation of “helicopter parents.”
In our effort to protect our kids, have we accidentally denied them the life skills that come from a little bit of risk, adventure, and the chance to figure things out for themselves?
Maybe those 1970s nightly news Public Service Announcements, “It’s 10 pm. Do you know where your children are?” stuck in the recesses of our young, impressionable minds.
The case for “Anarchic” playgrounds
What if giving your child a hammer and a pile of wood wasn’t an act of negligence, but a way to build their resilience? This is a question a growing number of parents and educators are asking. This shift is the focus of a feel-good news story titled, “The Anarchic Playgrounds Where Putting Kids At Risk Is The Point.”
The report speaks of Kolle 37, an adventure playground in Berlin that operates on a different set of rules. Here, you won’t find standardised, sanitised play structures.
Instead, children are given the freedom to build their own forts, manage their own projects, and engage in play that comes with a degree of natural risk. The report describes this as a “truer, messier” form of education.
“To a lot of people, it looks like junk and dirt, and [they think] that it isn’t useful,” says Marcus Schmidt, who trained as a social worker before joining Kolle 37 in 2005. “But here you get prepared for your future life.”
At Kolle 37, children are given access to tools and even supervised fire pits. While these elements might seem alarming, the playground’s history shows a strong safety record.
Sometimes children step on a nail and occasionally there are broken arms, Schmidt relays, but argues these accidents happen everywhere.
The report said, “In the same vein, Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter, associate professor at the Queen Maud University College of Early Childhood Education in Norway and co-author of the book Risky Play: An Ethical Challenge is at pains to distinguish between risks and hazards, the latter of which she argues is the responsibility of adults. Adventure playgrounds are about taking risks with intention, not going blindly into danger.”
Risky playground movement
The movement has taken off in other parts of Germany, which now claims the title for the “risky playground” capital of the world, and according to the Reasons to Be Cheerful report, is home to about 400 sites out of an estimated 1,000 worldwide, notably also in Denmark, France and England, such as the Big Swing Adventure Playground in Bradford.
This might not be a global movement just yet, but it suggests that by allowing children to face and overcome challenges on their own, parents help them develop life skills like judgment and confidence. It’s a return to a time when scraped knees and a little mud were simply a part of growing up.
You can read the full report here.