I\u2019m Dr. Mariana Brussoni and I\u2019m a faculty member at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Pediatrics and in the School of Population and Public Health. I\u2019m also a scientist at the BC Children\u2019s Hospital Research Institute and the BC Injury Research and Prevention Unit. My research over the last few years has focused on risky play from a developmental psychology and injury prevention perspective. Where I want to begin is really to give you a sense of what is risky play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We refer to it as thrilling and exciting forms of play that involve uncertainty and the chance of physical injury. So when you talk to kids about risky play, the kinds of things that they say is like it\u2019s thrilling but I get scared. Or it tickles in my tummy. Or it\u2019s scary and fun at the same time. And some of Ellen Sandseter\u2019s work, who\u2019s really the pioneer in this stuff, talks about this kind of scary, funny feeling that you get. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So one of the things that we often highlight is that risky play is in the eye of the doer not the observer or anybody else really. So it\u2019s the child themselves that figures out what\u2019s risky for them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So according to Ellen Sandseter\u2019s work there\u2019s six different kinds of risky play that have been described. So the first is play at speed. So for example when you\u2019re running really fast or going doing a hill on a bike; play at height, let\u2019s say you\u2019re climbing a tree or a big structure; play with dangerous tools like say hammers or nails, let\u2019s say when you\u2019re building a treehouse or something like that; play with dangerous elements like fire or water, like when you\u2019re roasting marshmallows on an open fire or even building a fire; rough and tumble play, so that would be like play fighting; play where there\u2019s a chance of getting lost, for example, kids who are allowed to go wander their neighbourhood without adults or for younger kids it could be say a toddler hiding behind a bush even though parents know exactly where they are. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what\u2019s important to think about in terms of risky play is that it really does look very different for different kids, not only because they might have different competence levels but they also might have different levels of comfort with taking risks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I mentioned that I\u2019m part of the BC Injury Research and Prevention Unit and it might seem counter-intuitive that I\u2019m interested in this topic. But really the way that we approach injury prevention while thinking about concepts of risky play is to take an approach like that one delineated by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents in the UK. And what they say is that really we should be trying to keep kids as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible. And so what this means is that rather than trying to prevent every little instance of injury and minor injuries and every possibility, what we\u2019re focusing on is really those \u2013 trying to prevent those instances of more major, serious injuries while still maintaining the opportunities for children to engage in risky play in settings that where they don\u2019t face those really dangerous hazards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I want to turn now to talk to you about one of the projects we\u2019re doing but I want to set a bit of a context as to why we\u2019re doing that project. We have a society that\u2019s really engaged in what I call anxiety-based caregiving. And so we\u2019re making decisions about what kids should be allowed to do and where they should play and so on based on our own anxieties. And so these could be many different things like we\u2019re afraid that they\u2019re going to get hurt. Or say we\u2019re a school principal, we\u2019re afraid of instances of liability. Or we\u2019re afraid that the child could get kidnapped. Or those sorts of things are really driving our decisions rather than thinking about what the child actually needs and what\u2019s best for that child. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so just to give you some instances of some of the stats that we\u2019ve seen \u2013 we\u2019ve found some recent surveys, for example, in the U.S as well as other surveys done internationally where about 50% of parents are worrying that their child might be kidnapped. And so that\u2019s really limiting their wanting to let their kids outside. And 62% of parents actually think that they are over protective. But most of them think that this kind of behaviour is actually necessary in what they perceive to be a very unsafe world. And 56% of parents say that children should be at least 10 years old before they\u2019re allowed to play in front of the house unsupervised while an adult is inside. And I think what\u2019s particularly concerning for me is not only this but that the trends seem to indicate that this is getting worse. So what this all means for kids is that they have a shrinking roaming range. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So even in a few years, as you can see from the stats here, we have 7 \u2013 12 year olds that were allowed to play outside on their own according to a 2009 survey it was 80%. Five years later, using the same methods, it was 75%. So a 5% drop in a very short amount of time. And then if you look at what kids themselves say is that there\u2019s also a drop in the kids that are preferring to spend time playing outside from 58% to 51% over the course of five years. And so this is worrying because they\u2019re getting more and more used to finding activities inside which has all sorts of kind of health and development implications, which we\u2019ll talk about shortly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also children themselves seem to be fed up and there\u2019s some really interesting projects you can see even videos online where children are talking about how fed up they are with being over protected. But this particular survey found that 56% of children and youth wanted more independence and 58% thought that adults were too over protective. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so we have a situation where we used to have kids that were used to getting outside and getting active. Kids are more active when they\u2019re outside and they\u2019re also having all sorts of developmental opportunities that they won\u2019t get inside and to the point at which now that they\u2019re spending more time in front of screens and a lot less active. So is all this worry justified? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In terms of Canadian statistics, this certainly isn\u2019t the case. I can tell you that it isn\u2019t the case for most countries but specific to Canada we have a chart here which shows injury rates for kids from 1950 \u2013 2010 and you can see that there has been huge decreases over time. It\u2019s really never been safer to be a kid in Canada. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now what about the stranger abductions? This is a huge worry for parents and it\u2019s a huge part of why they don\u2019t let their kids out to play. Well if we look at the stats there, the chances of a child being abducted by a stranger is about 1 in 14 million. So to put that in context, it\u2019s about the same odds as winning Lotto 649. So it\u2019s very, very unlikely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now we\u2019ve been trying to do something about this. So one of the things that we\u2019ve been involved with was a collaborative, national initiative to create a position statement on active outdoor play. Now this was released in 2015 as part of the \u2018Participaction\u2019 report card on physical activity for children and youth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And basically what we said in that position statement is that access to active play in nature and the outdoors with its risks is essential for healthy child development. We recommend increasing children\u2019s opportunities for self-directed play outdoors, in all settings, at home, at school, in childcare, the community and nature. Now if you do go and check out the position statement, you\u2019ll find the research that backs up what we say there, which can actually be very helpful in terms of if you\u2019re trying to educate the parents in your practice or your fellow ECE\u2019s. This position statement has also been quite useful in advocacy work even at the local and the national level. So for example, it was cited in a BC Supreme Court ruling that throughout a case of playground injury against a district in BC. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m Dr. Mariana Brussoni and I\u2019m a faculty member at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Pediatrics and in the School of Population and Public Health. I\u2019m also a scientist at the BC Children\u2019s Hospital Research Institute and the BC Injury Research and Prevention Unit. My research over the last few years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-text-only.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1750","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1751,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1750\/revisions\/1751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}