Talking Early Years: In Conversation with Ellen Sandseter
Risky Play or Not Risky Play – That is the Question!
Ellen Sandseter is a well-known professor at Queen Maud University College for Early Childhood Education in Trondheim, Norway but we all know her for her thoughtful and challenging work on risky play. She sets the challenge right up front and reminds us that we tend to confuse danger with risk. Danger is always there but it is different to risk. Children seek risk in their play, they know they can be injured or harmed but still take and assess those risks. What children need to be able to do is distinguish between those two concepts, because there will always be opportunities to take a risk and judge those against their own competencies. Ellen reminds us that positive risk is something that fosters well-being, mastering experiences, exhilaration and thrills. She notes that when she talks to children about risk, they describe it as scary, funny or fearful joy, almost existential experiences that build self-confidence and courage.
We limit this by creating a fearful, risk averse litigious society, keeping children indoors or managing their playtime through adult-supervised activities. She reflects the difference in cultural attitudes to risky play in Norway, Denmark and the UK, and their ranking on the happiness scale. Guess where Norway is!
Ellen defines the adult role as assessing and mitigating danger so children access an environment where they can take risks, but actual danger like broken equipment is removed. In fact, risky play has an anti-phobic effect where children have managed their fears during childhood through play. For example, children who climbed a tree and fell down and broke a leg don’t have a fear of heights when they’re older, but those who never climbed the tree do. It made me reflect on my childhood when we tried to do all sorts of brave deeds and the result was us comparing the size of the scabs on our knees, the bigger the more kudos you got!
Worried about this, we recently had a big conversation across LEYF as to whether we should change the term from ‘risky play’ to ‘adventurous’ or ‘challenging play’ to reduce parents’ anxieties. We tried to balance the issues of children’s rights to be creative and imaginative with the false joy from the increased digitalization of play. It elicited quite a lot of debate which we discussed including a review of how we design the children’s gardens for outdoor play. I am a bit obsessed with pedagogical design, and I was chuffed to hear from Ellen that she invited different architects as well as leaders of the municipalities and private organisations to work together to design playgrounds that were best for children and, in doing so, develop a common language between pedagogues and architects. The result across Norway was that playgrounds were built on site with natural elements instead of picking a climbing frame from a booklet. I think this would be of great interest to Jen Singer, who leads the architects at the DfE.
We also raised concern that children need physical play and healthy food to build and store calcium. Many children are increasingly calcium deficient which is a worry because by the time a child reaches young adulthood, their bones reach their peak bone density for life. After that, the body mainly withdraws calcium from what is still stored in our bones. This may be a useful argument for parents and staff who can also be very anxious about risky play. It opens the conversation about the balancing role of men in childcare and the involvement of dads, who are less fearful about physical play with more risks.
So, if you are interested in a conversation about risky play from a leader in the field, listen here and comment on LinkedIn. listen here
