In PHQP_0015 Hazard Mitigation, Jeff explores the importance of supporting risk-taking in children’s play by effectively mitigating hazards. He outlines three hazard categories and shares five practical mitigation strategies.

Watch Now: PHQP_0015 Hazard Mitigation

Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. Thanks for pushing play. I’m Jeff Johnson on with the show.

So I’m out for a walk the other day, as I want to do, and I walked by the local playground where I’ve seen kids doing things I’ve told stories about on this show before. And they’re, the playground is, excuse me, full of cardboard. And I’ve got no idea where it came from.

But they, the kids had a bunch of cardboard boxes, maybe somebody moved in the neighborhood or anything. And they had some of them, the ends open, and they were, they were put together to form a maybe 12 foot long tunnel. And a couple kids were building a suit of armor or robot or Iron Man suit or something out of them, covering themselves.

And a couple kids were using hunks of cardboard to try to surf down the slide. And some kids were rolling around, hiding in the cardboard, and on and on it went. And continued my walk, came back an hour and a half later, walking by going the other direction.

And just a couple kids headed for the, heading for the nearby dumpster with the last bits of cardboard. So somehow the cardboard showed up and was a wonderful play material for a couple hours. And then they tidied up and went on about their day.

So that was, that was kind of great. I liked, liked seeing it. It reminded me of my, my well-spent childhood.

So let’s get into this episode. Topic one, hazard mitigation. And so we talked earlier about risk and how risk is important.

How there are, are basically four types of risk. There’s physical risk, which is what we consider the one we spend most of our time on. There’s emotional risk, there’s social risk, and there’s cognitive risk.

And one of the things that we want to do, if we want to support risk-taking, which we should, is to get better at mitigating hazards. So let’s go through a little review of the terminology first. So danger is something that may cause harm.

Again, my favorite example, a kitten. A kitten may cause harm. Hazard equals a danger not easily seen or predicted.

So the, the teeth and the claws of that little kitten are the most dangerous parts. And so those are the hazards. Those are what makes the kitten dangerous.

And a risk is something you can observe, evaluate, and choose. So if you’re four and you’ve never held a baby kitten before. A baby kitten before? Isn’t that kitten as a baby cat? Maybe baby kitten is redundant.

Anyway, if you’ve never held a kitten before, you can evaluate that situation and decide whether you want to hold the kitten or not. Where hazard mitigation comes in is you, as an adult, informing that child about those potential dangers that they might not see or anticipate. You can say, okay, you can hold the kitten, but you need to be, need to be aware they’ve got, they got sharp little teeth in their little mouths and they got razor blades on the end of their fingertips, and you’ve got to hold them carefully.

And if the kitten gets scared, or if you grab them too hard, or you antagonize him, he might try to claw or bite you. And so that is an example of hazard mitigation. Hazard mitigation might also be wearing long sleeves when you’re holding kittens for the first time, because long sleeves kind of protect your arms a little bit from, from kitten teeth and claws.

And so those, making kids aware of those things is really what hazard mitigation is about. And so hazard mitigation involves seeing or predicting those dangers kids might miss. And that’s where our focus should be.

We want to support the risk-taking. We want children to choose to do things that, that might cause them some sort of discomfort, whether it was a physical discomfort or emotional discomfort within, within means. I mean, health and safety is always a concern, but risk-taking, like we talked about in other episodes, is also a part of learning.

We can’t learn if we don’t take risks. And so we want to create environments where we can make it as safe and safe as possible to take those risks. And that means we focus on not on preventing risks, but on mitigating hazards in those environments that get in the way.

So hazard mitigation is a proactive process. We’ve got to, we’ve got to actively engage in it. And so maybe the way we support risk-taking on our playgrounds is we do daily playground safety checks.

We make sure that all the play structures are in good shape and make sure all of the play materials, the loose parts, are in good shape. And we make sure that there aren’t any contaminants on the surfaces. I’m talking about things like cat poop in the sandbox, those kind of things.

We check the perimeter, make sure the fence is in good shape and the gate is in good working order so that kids are secure. And then, and then we, you know, we check the resilient surfaces under the, the climbing tree or under the play structures. And that’s, that’s proactive hazard mitigation, preparing to, again, help kids see and predict the things that they, they might miss.

So part of it is identifying and addressing those potential dangers to minimize their impact. And so we look, we actively look with our adult eyes and minds for the risks. Rough and tumble play, maybe if we want to support that more, maybe we need to look around our environment to make sure that it’s not happening where it’s likely somebody’s going to whack their head against a pole or a table edge or something like that.

And that becomes our job. Hazard mitigation reduces the downside of risk-taking. And so what we need to look at is that we’re, we’re trying to make risk-taking safer for kids when we hazard, when we engage in hazard mitigation.

And so, and I think that’s important, an important reason to, to break up that terminology. Danger, something that may cause harm. Hazard, something that may cause harm that, that we’re likely to not anticipate or see.

And a risk is a choice to do a thing, even though it may cause, may cause harm. And we can do hazard mitigation with, with social, emotional, and cognitive risks too. We can do things in our environment to, to make that, that shy, insecure kid feel more confident speaking up and putting themselves out there in social situations, for example.

So we can, we can do health hazard mitigation, not only on the physical side of things, which, which is probably where we should focus, but also on the, the emotional and social side of things. Topic two, also hazard mitigation related, is three hazard categories. And so this is, this is a handout I put together.

It’s a one-page handout. And so basically, this covers three hazard categories that are, that are good to be aware of when you’re doing hazard mitigation. And so those three are, are objects, that’s physical things.

And so we want to make sure we’re paying attention to physical things that may cause harm. There are situations that, that might cause, that might cause harm. So a fire in the building, for example, might be a hazard you want to mitigate for.

And that’s why we do fire drills. We’re preparing for these, these situations that may cause harm. So fire drills, tornado drills, intruder drills, those kinds of things are all forms of hazard mitigate, hazard mitigation.

And then behaviors can be, can be, are a type of hazard. So behaviors, oh, like cutting your own finger or stapling your hand, using a, using a hammer or a saw on yourself. Those are, those are behaviors that kids might choose to engage in that could absolutely cause harm.

And so when we’re, we’re giving kids tools to use, whether it’s a stapler or a hand saw or a hammer, we need to do some hazard mitigation, talking about the ways they can hurt themselves with that. Some other behaviors like rough and tumble play or climbing, or a lot of the things that we want to support are behaviors that could cause harm, but those are choices that we want to improve. So we, we look at ways we can mitigate the surrounding area, the, the situation and the objects around us to make those activities safer.

But this is where we also come up with rules for those behaviors that, that make it easier for the kids to engage in that. So when it comes to behaviors, for example, in rough and tumble play, this is where helping, having kids help make the rules for their play come in. So they come up with the rules like, and kids are really good at this.

They, they’re, they’re, they’re wired for self-preservation. And so they come up with things like, let’s not hit in the face. And how about no pinching? And let’s, how about no punching in the privates? My brother hit me in the privates and it really hurts.

They come up with the rules like that. And those are behaviors that they learn to manage when it comes to, we’ll use rough and tumble play as an example, when it comes to, to that activity, managing some of those behaviors, mitigate some of the hazard of that activity. If you create rough and tumble where we’re not hitting in the face and we’re not pitching and we’re not scratching and we’re not, we’re not whacking each other below the belt, you’ve done a lot to mitigate a lot of the hazards, the behavioral hazards of rough and tumble play.

And then the situation itself, that play, you make sure that that play is only happening in the designated rough and tumble area. And then you, objects, you make sure the area is clear of table edges and those kinds of things. I don’t know, broken glass, you don’t want a rough and tumble play on broken glass, making sure that that’s addressed.

And then you’ve addressed the object situations and behaviors that could cause harm in rough and tumble play. And you’ve made rough and tumble play a much safer risk to take. So that’s the three hazard categories.

Next up, topic three is five hazard mitigation strategies. These hazard mitigation strategies are from another handout I put together for the Playvolution HQ site. And because I’m such a nice guy, I linked to them in the episode notes.

So let’s take a look at these. So hazard mitigation strategies, first off is raising awareness. And so one of the things we can do to mitigate hazards, excuse me, we don’t want to mitigate strategies, is to just help raise awareness of something.

You might raise awareness of the claws and teeth on the kitten. You might raise awareness that climbing the tree might result in falling. You might raise awareness that rough and tumble play might result in bumps, bruises, scratches, or scrapes.

Just that simple warning. It doesn’t have to be a big sit-down conversation. It can just be little conversations with kids as they’re preparing to do the new thing.

Maybe if you’re introducing a new type of play, having a group discussion about it can raise awareness. But it can be informal as well. So just raising awareness is a good hazard mitigation strategy.

Next one is elimination. You can eliminate the thing that’s causing the hazard. You can make sure, I mean, you could ban kittens and you could ban rough and tumble play, but you probably want to protect those things and support those things.

But elimination is a good strategy in some situations. For example, you might want to eliminate the broken glass and cat poop from the playground. You might want to eliminate the child who can’t control their strength from rough and tumble play with smaller children until they’ve more practice and can do that.

So maybe you’ve got a very, very strong three-year-old who doesn’t have a whole lot of awareness about their proprioception, how much pressure they’re using when they grapple with somebody. And so maybe they only rough and tumble play with school-agers until they build that skill. So that’s an example of eliminating them.

Another thing we can do to manage and mitigate hazards is substitutions. We can substitute this for that. So kids like to throw stuff, but we don’t want them throwing the blocks in the block area, for example.

And because throwing blocks could end up with somebody getting a big old bloody gash in their forehead or a broken window, maybe we substitute the throwing of blocks with the throwing of softer items, beanbags or shower loofahs or aluminum foil balls or those kind of things in a designated throwing area. And so we’re not stopping the throwing all together. We’re substituting materials and location by making it safe.

Substituting rough and tumble play, breaking out wherever it may start to a dedicated rough and tumble area is an example of that. Next is physical controls. This first option involves using equipment to reduce potential harm.

Wearing long-sleeved shirts and long pants when you’re holding a kitten for the first time, for example. Using sun protection, wearing a hat when you’re outside in the sun, wearing a bike helmet. Those are all examples of physical controls you can use to mitigate hazards.

And then finally is administrative controls. Administrative controls guide the way jobs are performed and it can help reduce harm and potential hazard. And so this really goes into policies and procedures.

There’s a whole policy and procedures section over on the Playvolution HQ website, but if we have thoughtful administrative controls over a lot of this stuff, we reduce hazards. And so maybe one of the administrative controls is that a play ground safety check is done every morning before the kids use the playground, things like that. And so those are four, five, excuse me, five mitigation strategies.

Awareness, elimination, substitution, physical controls, and administrative controls. And I think those two handouts can be really helpful if you’re going to dig more into the idea of hazard mitigation. So let’s move on, wrapping up for this episode.

Get some cardboard outside. I love seeing it. That’s, I mean, I think some of those kids that were playing with the big cardboard boxes outside had never had an outside cardboard experience and they were loving it.

And so if you can get some cardboard boxes out in your playground, if you’ve never tried it before, I think it will spark some interesting play. I might want to give it a try. Amazon idea for this month is Field Note notebooks.

I guess they’re, yeah, Field Books. Field Notes is another brand. They’re great too.

I like these Field Books. They’re great. I’ve got, the one I carry around with me most is in my little leather thing and it’s just regular paper and it’s great for keeping notes.

They’re small enough you can shove them in your pocket. And if you’re doing just observations of play, it makes it easy to not jot things down. If you want to make notes with conversation with parents, they come in handy.

And so those are great. But they’ve got this special version that’s got this slippery paper on it. It’s waterproof paper.

And I found the best pen to use on it are these fine point Sharpie pens, because some pens don’t work on that slippery paper. But if you’re going to be in wet areas, if you do outside play in the rain, if you’ve got water play going on, the waterproof ones work out really good for taking notes in those kind of inclement situations. But I really like them for keeping track of what’s going on.

I carried one with me in my caregiver days and put a link in the episode notes to those as well. If you’re looking for some easy thing to keep track of programs with. Share the show if you like it.

Next week, we’re talking about concepts as loose parts. Loose parts don’t have to be physical objects. And the dad joke of the week, why did the golfer bring two pairs of pants? In case he got a hole in one.

So there’s that. This year has been the show. No, this year has been the Play Evolution HQ podcast.

Thanks for listening. Back soon. Bye-bye.

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