At Recreation inSites, we firmly believe that play and activity are vital to the physical AND mental development of our children. As outdoor play competes more and more with video games and other low-impact activities, we see the need for outdoor play equipment that is interactive and engaging. That’s why we incorporate the best playground equipment from KOMPAN Playground Equipement. KOMPAN’s depth and breadth of interactive playground equipment keeps kids of all ages engaged in heart and mind!
Below, American Attorney Philip Howard writes a terrific blog post championing for letting kids play with a video that begins with children on a KOMPAN Supernova!
———–
Notions of “appropriate” play are thrown out the window in this amazing video footage from New Zealand. Kids run around, tackle each other in a game called “bullrush,” ride scooters over ramps, climb trees, and–gasp–point sticks like guns. Then they go back to class where, the principal says, they are able to focus on schoolwork. (Thanks to David Webb for finding this video.)
In America, by contrast, schools ban games like tag, or even running at recess. So it’s hardly surprising that there’s an epidemic of ADD. Playgrounds are stripped of any implements that might involve risk–such as merry-go-rounds and jungle gyms. Small wonder there’s a crisis of obesity when it’s more challenging to play video games on the sofa than to go to a playground with no challenge at all.
Child development experts repeatedly say that it is vital for children, for mental as well as physical development, to deal with normal risks of childhood. (I compiled much of this material in “The Freedom To Take Risks” chapter in Life Without Lawyers.) Coddling children makes them less safe in the long run, because they will be less able to deal with real risks later in life. As the New Zealand principal points out, learning how to handle risk early on makes a young student less likely to take too much risk when he gets a driver’s license.
Letting kids in America play again requires an organized effort. Today, the most innocent accident can mean an expensive lawsuit. That’s why the school board in Broward County, Florida banned running at recess. And, worse, American culture has changed. Parents and educators no longer have an instinct for what’s an appropriate risk. Avoiding risk has become an obsession. Safety is only half an idea; the question is what we’re giving up to get it. If children are raised without skills to cope with life, we are increasing risk, not reducing it.
Perhaps what’s needed is a presidential commission on the appropriate risks of childhood. By restating common sense principles, America could then empower judges (as well as parents) to affirmatively embrace healthy risks so that kids can, well, go back to being kids again.
For more Howard’s Daily posts, visit commongood.org/blog.