The Truth About Risky Play

I was really excited to talk to you about risky play for a few reasons.

First, risky play used to terrify me when I first became a mom because I had a lot of anxiety.

I didn't want my kids to get hurt, and so I would often kind of veer towards being that helicopter parent.

Like, "No, be careful.

Be careful.

Don't do that." But what I noticed was the more I was saying that, of course my kids were becoming more cautious, which was good, but also they were starting to get more anxious and nervous and not necessarily trust themselves, which isn't what I wanted.

I also wanted to talk about it because I feel like I see a lot of people, even, like, books, talking about the importance of risky play without really defining what it is and how to go about it in a safe way.

So I was actually doing some research for my own book about risky play, and I thought, "You know what? This is gonna make a really great episode, so let's do a podcast on it." So first, let's just define what risky play is.

Risky play is a thrilling and exciting form of play that involves some sort of risk of a physical injury, okay? So it can include climbing to great heights, high speed, using something that could be dangerous.

For example, your child's, like, using a hammer.

There could be some element of danger to it, like they're walking on a rock that could be slippery or something like that.

There could be some rough and tumble to it, or there could be something where they could, let's say, get lost.

Now, there is something that's really important to say.

When there is risk, right? So we have to always think about how much risk are we willing to take for our kids.

We never wanna take so much risk that it becomes hazardous.

So hazardous is, like, there's a risk of major injury, there's a risk of death, there's a risk of something really terrible happening to your child, like drowning.

We are, are never encouraging our children to engage in hazardous activities.

That is dangerous.

That is not something we want to do.

That is not something we want to encourage, and that is something that we need to actually teach our kids to be cautious about, okay? So that's like, let's just put that out there right away.

So I'll give you an example.

You're never gonna encourage your child to walk on some slippery rocks when on the other side of those slippery rocks is, like, super deep water, and they don't know how to swim, and they could drown, right? We're not gonna encourage that.

You might say to your child that they could try and walk on some slippery rocks in a little creek, where the worst thing that could happen is they fall off the rock, and they fall into the creek, and they get wet, right? So we have to really think about the balance between the risk and something being hazardous, and we're never encouraging our kids to be hazardous.

Now, the reason why a little bit of risk is important for kids is it helps them increase their confidence.

It helps them have to learn how to kinda navigate a difficult situation.