Last week when I picked up my son from school, I watched him play tetherball with some friends.
He loves the game.
He wound up his 10-year-old body like a catapult and hit a yellow ball on a rope as hard as he could toward his opponent. The ball (attached to an 8 ft piece of rope) took off and shot around the pole in an elliptical orbit narrowly missing the kid’s face across from him. The ball spun three times around the pole before gravity finally allowed the other kid to grab it and return the favor. They both squealed in delight as the ball careened off their bodies narrowly missing their heads.
Nearby, a parent commented that he had broken his nose playing tetherball in 5th grade. I also remember getting smacked by a tetherball and hearing one instance of a friend getting his tongue stuck to an icy tetherball pole one cold winter day.
So, out of curiosity, I decided to take a look down the Google rabbit hole to learn more about the world of banned playground equipment.
I found a lot of information, some made more sense than others — trapeze bars, giant strides, and the witch’s hat, all banned due to risks they pose to kids’ safety.
I came across data from a law firm attempting to identify the most dangerous pieces of playground equipment. Not far down the list along with metal slides, merry-go-rounds, and seesaws…was…tetherball. This same source also reported the leading cause of childhood injuries on playgrounds are falls and asphyxiation; playground injuries occur more often at school than at home; and younger boys (10-14) are the highest-risk group.
Sobering data, for sure.
But, then, I recalled the squeals of joy from my son and his friends and wondered about the potential cost vs. benefits of constantly mitigating risks for our kids in our school or neighborhood playgrounds.
What happens if tetherballs, seesaws, or monkey bars go extinct one day?
Most kids will tell you that recess is their favorite thing about school — and some of these “dangerous” activities are beloved games to them.
The American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement (2013) describing in detail the cognitive and academic benefits of giving kids recess.
Recess promotes social and emotional learning and development for children by offering them a time to engage in peer interactions in which they practice and role-play essential social skills.
This same report also noted a growing tension between “free play” and “structured recess” as more schools are enlisting school personnel (or volunteers) to lead games and facilitate play among children.
Is this influx of adult “support” helping or hindering kids from playing freely? Having served as a recess monitor at many schools, I have great respect for adults who care for children in these settings. And, I think it’s also a critical time and space for children to be themselves, to explore, and to try stuff out.
Given the choice, many kids will gravitate toward risk at some point in their childhoods. They are wired for it. In one study of children conducted in Australia on kids 4-5 years old, 74% of the children said they wanted to play on more dangerous equipment even though only 20% of them had experience with using it. Other research has shown that imposing too many restrictions on outdoor play spaces can hamper children's development.
Risk-taking in play helps children test their physical limits, develop their perceptual-motor capacity, and learn to avoid and adjust to dangerous environments and activities.
There is also clear evidence indicating children’s opportunities to play outdoors freely have steadily declined over the past few generations. There are lots of reasons for this...Parents view unsupervised spaces as riskier (e.g., stranger danger), and many youth sports have become a year-round, semi-pro activity. Or, from the perspective of kids asked to take photos of their day, 50% of them shared snapshots of being driven somewhere in a car. Oh, and screentime. It also doesn't help that stricter standards on some playgrounds can make these "play" spaces less engaging to kids which further reduces their interest in physical activity.
Yet, children's desire to engage in risky play remains as strong as ever from my observations of kids in playgrounds who I see jumping off high bars and racing recklessly around on their bikes or scooters.
Kids still seek out tetherball even if they risk getting their teeth knocked out.
So, how do we keep kids coming back to playgrounds & protect free play in these spaces they need and want?
Here are a few ideas I found helpful:
* Assess our mindset toward risk and safety. Be aware of “Risk Deficit Disorder” in ourselves (a tendency to remove all risks from kids’ lives). Consider how to strike a balance between ensuring a kid’s safety (critical for their well-being & development) with giving them opportunities to explore risk and their own limitations (also critical for their well-being & development). Note: parents' concerns related to their kids’ safety are shown to be the most significant influence on children accessing independent play.
* Adventure playgrounds?? Adventure playgrounds provide child-centered and child-directed play spaces where children create and modify their own environments. In adventure playgrounds, children can have access to raw materials such as building supplies and tools, as well as sand, dirt, and water. You can sort of recreate this in your backyard with mud, water, and wood beams, but scaling up city-wide adventure playgrounds will require much bigger discussions around building play infrastructure that offers kids places to take risks, explore, & create (read more about these playgrounds in Tokyo here).
* List the 10 best memories from your childhood before high school. I’m willing to bet if you grew up in the 1980s or 70s many of your best memories occurred outside and were likely unsupervised by adults. On my list were getting chased by a swarm of bees and colliding head-first with a flagpole at my elementary school (ugh!). And, on a more positive note, playing capture the flag, wallball, or soccer until sundown. How many of our kids will have access to these types of experiences today? What will they remember as formative experiences from their childhoods?
* Growing your own Playborhoods. A Playborhood is a term Mike Lanza coined to advance a new vision for neighborhoods designed around free play. He talks about the value of seeing kid debris strewn along a city street as a healthy sign of active play (e.g., bikes, balls, & chalk drawings). Lanza also frames the loss of free play today as a societal issue that is too often viewed as an individual problem by parents (“It’s just our kid who seems disengaged or bored”). In his book, he provides a roadmap for families and neighbors with action steps and examples to encourage more communal play spaces for kids — “it will take a coordinated, social action to get more kids outside”
* Shifting away from playdates and back to play. I never had a “playdate” as a child. I found kids on the street or wandered around until something happened. I wouldn’t trade the day I invaded my friend’s treehouse (unsupervised) for 10 playdates. It was an unscripted and incredible moment of play and joy (we seized the treehouse in 5 minutes, it was empty when we took over). I also don’t want to minimize the risks of stranger danger, traffic, or other parental fears, but I think these fears are limiting our kids from playing more freely with one another today. I see how my “bubblewrap” parenting can dampen spontaneity as I arrange playdates for our kids. I’m not sure playdates are going away anytime soon, but I do want to be more aware of my how I parent and the messages I send.
For now, the tetherball pole remains planted outside my son’s school. He will be there at lunchtime today whacking away at the yellow ball. But, as he lines up for his chance to swing again, I’m worried tetherball may be going extinct.
I hope we don’t overlook or forget what science and perhaps our own childhood experiences have shown us — or, we may be giving up the risks, bruises, giggles, and valuable life lessons that come with games like tetherball sooner than we think.
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