How Much Risk Should a Child Be Allowed in Play?

A child is near the top of the climbing frame, one foot stretching for a rung that is a little too far away. Almost every grown-up feels the same pull: say "careful," or lift them down.

Whether to do either is one of the most practical questions in play, and researchers have a name for the territory: risky play. In a 2007 paper, Norwegian researcher Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter sorted it into six kinds: play at great heights, play at high speed, play with dangerous tools, play near dangerous elements such as water or fire, rough-and-tumble play, and play where children can wander out of sight or get lost. Most parents will recognize every one of them from their own childhood. This piece is about deciding which of them to allow, and which to stop.

What the research says

In 2015, a systematic review led by Mariana Brussoni at the University of British Columbia looked at studies of risky outdoor play and children's health. It found that the studies, taken together, linked risky outdoor play with positive outcomes, including more physical activity and better social health and behavior. The authors were candid that much of the underlying evidence was of limited quality.

The same year, a group of Canadian organizations published a Position Statement on Active Outdoor Play. It concluded that access to active play in nature and outdoors, with its risks, is essential for healthy child development, and it recommended giving children more chances to play that way, not fewer.

Neither document says that anything goes. Both draw a line, and the line is the useful part.

A risk is not the same as a hazard

Playground safety work commonly separates two things. A risk is a challenge the child can see and decide about: how high to climb, how fast to run down the hill, whether to jump from the second step or the third. A hazard is a danger the child cannot see or cannot judge: a cracked rung, a gap that can trap a head, a cord that can catch.

The rule that follows is short. Allow the risk. Remove the hazard.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's Public Playground Safety Handbook is a good list of hazards, because they are exactly the things a child cannot be expected to spot. It warns about drawstrings on hoods and jackets, which can catch on equipment, and about children wearing bike helmets while on playground equipment. It flags openings between 3.5 and 9 inches, which a body can slip through while a head cannot. And it treats hard surfaces such as asphalt and concrete under equipment as unsuitable, because falls are where most of the serious harm comes from.

Allow the risk. Remove the hazard.

Three questions before you say "careful"

• Can the child see the danger? If yes, it is a risk they can learn to judge. If no, it is a hazard, and fixing it is the grown-up's job, not the child's.
• What is the worst realistic outcome? A scraped knee, a bump or a bruise is the ordinary price of learning what a body can do. A fall from a height onto concrete is not.
• Did the child choose it? A climb a child worked up to on their own usually sits at the edge of what they can manage. A climb a grown-up lifted them into does not. A practical habit follows: do not put a child somewhere they could not get to by themselves.

When something does call for a word, a plain description helps more than a warning. "Careful" tells a child that a grown-up is worried. "That rock looks wet," or "the branch gets thin out there," tells them what to notice. It is the same describing skill covered in the piece on how a grown-up should play with a child, used for a different job.

Where this approach stops

Water is not a risk to dose out. Drowning can happen quickly and quietly. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends close, constant, attentive supervision around water, with an adult within arm's reach of young children. The three questions above do not apply to a pool, a bath or a lake.

Traffic is not one either. A young child cannot judge the speed of a car, so a road is a hazard by definition, however confident the child feels.

Children are not interchangeable. A child whose medical condition affects balance, bones or bleeding may need different limits, and that is a conversation for their doctor. The piece on when letting kids play is not enough covers that kind of situation.

Other people's settings have their own rules. A school, a child care center or a friend's backyard sets its own limits, and those win while the child is there.

The evidence is encouraging, not conclusive. The review behind most of this rests on studies of limited quality. It supports letting children take ordinary risks. It does not promise that more risk always means healthier kids.

The short answer

More than most grown-ups instinctively allow, as long as the danger is one the child can see. Check the equipment, the surface and the clothing, then step back and let them work out how high is high enough. Stay close around water and roads, every time. Climbing and chasing are also among the easiest ways to reach the daily activity a child needs, which is part of why Let's Get Kids Playing Again includes the bumps along with the fun.

This is not medical advice. A pediatrician is the person to ask about your own child.