Norwegian psychologists Leif Kennar and Ellen Sandsetter explain why modern playgrounds must be much more hazardous to a child's health.
ELLEN BEATA HANSON-SANDSETTER, Professor of Psychology at Queen Maud University College for Preschool Teachers:
Modern society sets new rules of the game for children - in the truest sense of the word. In my childhood, children were allowed to run around the streets and climb trees all day. In between games, you ran home, grabbed a sandwich in the kitchen and ran out into the street again - until the evening. Nowadays, children's life is more orderly and organized, for example, in Norway 90% of children from one year of age go to kindergarten, then it is the turn of school with the inevitable extension. Children spend all their time under strict adult control, and it is almost impossible to see them on the streets or in parks.
I am forty years old, and the playgrounds where I played were noticeably different from the modern ones. We had bungees, climbing nets, tall slides, step swings, and most importantly, they were all different, one might even say unique. Today's sites are impersonal, similar to one another.
In 1999, when I was in graduate school, it occurred to me to conduct research on the relevance of modern playgrounds to children's needs. A year earlier, Norway passed a law on uniform safety standards, and many playgrounds that were built by urban communities from improvised funds were closed. Those communities that had enough money to buy standard attractions brought plastic swings, low one-meter-high slides and stairs with stable steps, sandboxes with fungi to the playgrounds.
Of course, this was not enough for the children, they began to complicate the rides: for normal development they need risk, and they will get it in any way possible. For example, they get tired of sliding down a hill, and they start running backwards on it. Or they climb onto the roof of the fungus and jump from there until the adults can see. Or jumping off a swing. Fortunately, in Norway the surface under the swing is sandy, and it is pleasant to land in the sand, but, for example, in Britain, the swing is placed on a cinder surface so that children do not jump from it at all. Of course it doesn't help.
According to statistics, the number of children injured at playgrounds in Norway after the adoption of the law on uniform safety standards at playgrounds has not decreased and is 2.2 cases annually in each kindergarten. This includes everything: bruises, scrapes, broken noses and bruises, that is, those things that no normal childhood should do without. At the same time, we identified a tendency: if earlier children were injured due to allegedly insufficient safety on the playgrounds, now they break their arms and legs, trying to make the “sterile” instruments more interesting and, one might say, dangerous.
LEIF KENNAR, Professor of Psychology, Norwegian University of Life Sciences and Engineering:
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I worked with Ellen when she was writing her dissertation. My hypothesis is that the child's desire for so-called dangerous play is a normal stage of psychological development. And if we try to protect him from all possible dangers, then we will not get a full-fledged personality. Let me give you a simple example. In my lectures, I often ask students if they are afraid of wasps. As a rule, everyone is afraid of this, but people who have been stung by a wasp at least once in their life are less afraid than those who have never been stung by a wasp. After all, each of us has hidden phobias: we are afraid of fire, water, heights, pain. And if a child never in his life comes into contact with all of the above, his phobias will only progress.
As a psychologist, for twenty years now I have been working with people who are obsessed with fear. Parents, which is quite understandable, are subject to such fears much more than others. I am trying to explain that bruises and scratches do not pose any threat to the child's life and that a bump on the head will not interfere with his development. But according to statistics, nothing more terrible than a couple of bruises or a dislocated arm can happen to a child on the playground. Fortunately, fatalities at sites are extremely rare and occur in Europe no more than one in a decade.
As a child, I myself repeatedly cut myself with a knife and never cut off my fingers. And a normal childhood involves overcoming fears, but not artificially eliminating them. In parallel with my main job, I am a judo coach and can always distinguish those children who were protected from dangerous games from those who were not artificially restricted in their development. The first ones do not know how to maintain balance, their coordination of movements is pretty lame. I ask them to raise their right hand - they raise their left. And the second group of children performs all the tasks with incredible ease. The playground is a model of society, and you shouldn't make it as safe as a pressure chamber. Otherwise, instead of normal children, we will have strange little people.
Children don't need extra safety, they need adrenaline. Ellen showed me an amazing video of a boy playing in one of the carousel booths, designed to meet all modern security requirements. But if earlier such booths were wooden, now they are made of solid plastic, since it is believed that a piece of wood can be broken in a clever way, and then the child will climb onto the roof of the booth. There is an episode in the video in which the boy drags a large broom to the booth, puts it in a spacer and climbs onto the roof using it. The conclusion suggests itself: by being overly concerned about child safety, are we not achieving the opposite result? After all, how can an adult predict which path the child's fantasy will take?
ELLEN BEATA HANSON-SANDSETTER: In 2005, I agreed with the teachers of a dozen kindergartens that I would come to their playgrounds with a video camera. In total, I watched 70 children 3-5 years old. My research confirmed the theory that children lack standard equipment on playgrounds and tend to look for additional hazards. At the same time, they themselves perfectly observe safety measures and will never risk more than necessary. For example, they will never climb to the top of a tree, but will gradually climb to it, overcoming the fear “step by step”. I divided my experimental subjects into five categories: the first like to climb to heights, the second hate to play under supervision, the third like to run around the court at a terrible speed, the fourth love to play with dangerous objects and, finally, the fifth are fighters.
The first category is the most common. Fear of heights occurs most often in people, they experience it from a very young age, and children, climbing a tree or the top of a ladder, unconsciously try to overcome it. Children with extra speed cravings are trying to figure out where their limits are, what space is right for walking and what space is for running. Again, those who run away from adults on the court emphasize their independence and maturation. And if earlier the care of educators was necessary for them, now they feel confident in their own small forces.
If we talk about games with dangerous objects, then in the case of my research we are talking about knives. This is a common thing in Norway: when a child turns five, adults allow him to use a penknife. He can take him to kindergarten, cut pipes out of wooden blocks. Children who love to play with knives handle dangerous objects better as adults than those from whom sharp objects are hidden.
And when children fight, they try to develop techniques to win in any dispute and take a place in society. From a social standpoint, fights in playgrounds are very important as children develop self-confidence and learn to fight.
LEIF KENNAR: From an evolutionary perspective, the ideal playground should be like the environment in which the child will live as they mature. But such things were possible a thousand years ago, not now. Modern society is changing too quickly, changes are not predictable enough, and we can do one thing - give the child the opportunity to play the way he wants, overcoming his fears. Every parent wants his child not to climb dangerous heights, to be afraid of strangers, not to grab sharp objects. On an ideal site, all these dangers are collected in miniature. You can cover your baby with cotton wool, sterilize their toys endlessly, but eventually they will grow up and face bacteria, hard earth, and sharp corners.
As a child, I lived in a village near Oslo. I calmly climbed trees, cliffs and rocks, and my parents could not imagine that it was dangerous. When I was six, I decided to persuade a girl I really liked to jump from a small cliff to a tree. I stood on the cliff, grabbed the branch of the tree closest to me, quite flexible, with such red berries. I flew up and then fell, hitting the base of the cliff with all my might. The girl ran away in fear, and I, standing on all fours, crawled home. My father was gone, my mother was feeding my sister in the bedroom, and I secretly stuffed my bloody shirt into the washing machine. But my mother, of course, found her, after which she examined me and took me to the doctor. Since then I have a 15-centimeter scar on my back. But such things are normal, they teach you to measure your capabilities against desires.