Children should be kept as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible. (View Highlight)
We parents are caught in a paradox. We desperately want to keep our children safe and ensure their success. We are also often terrified that they will get hurt and that they will fail—so we do everything we can to prevent that from happening. Yet many of those very efforts to manage our fears have paradoxically reduced our children’s safety and their odds of success. (View Highlight)
Time use data show that children’s leisure time has gone down, particularly time spent in unstructured outdoor play, while time spent in academic and screen-based activities has increased. (View Highlight)
On the surface, it’s not clear why a need for risky play would evolve across species, if it increases the chances that something bad will happen to those who partake in it. But when we dig a little deeper, its benefits become obvious. Risky play provides children with low-cost opportunities to develop the physical and cognitive skills to master the challenges that they will face as they grow older. So, those who engaged in it had a major evolutionary advantage over those who did not. Physically, risky play allows children to explore more diverse movements and gain physical movement skills. Cognitively, it helps them overcome their fears, build their critical thinking skills, and become accustomed to coping independently with difficult situations. (View Highlight)
beneficios evolución riesgo juego
Among the most important factors driving the loss of risky play and childhood freedom is the move toward intensive parenting that began in the 1980s.2 Parents, particularly mothers, have been encouraged to micro-manage their children’s lives, curate their experiences, remove any barriers, and enroll them in diverse structured activities with the intention of enhancing their development and giving them an edge in the race to succeed (View Highlight)
Parents today receive constant messaging that in order to be “good parents”, they must always keep their children safe. And it is widely believed that the world is no longer a safe place for children to play in. Yet statistics show that it has never been a safer time to be a child. (View Highlight)
What kids are dying from today are mainly car crashes and suicides, not playing outside unsupervised with friends. Parents are worrying about the wrong causes of injuries and harm**. In fact, the very strategies that parents use to try to keep their children safe – driving them around, maximizing supervision, and minimizing freedom – are unintentionally increasing the likelihood of injuries and even death.** (View Highlight)
The three key ingredients necessary for thriving play environments are Time, Space, and Freedom. (View Highlight)
schools should also take steps to prioritize outdoor instruction and recess. This can be particularly important for children from disadvantaged families without ready access to safe and stimulating outdoor environments (View Highlight)