"Risky play" is a buzzy term in the field of early childhood education. It's one of those phrases that grandparents will likely roll their eyes at because "risky play" (balancing on logs, wielding sticks, climbing trees) is what they just called "play." Or maybe they didn't call it anything at all, because it was just the proverbial (and sometimes literal) water that they and their children were swimming in. But here's the thing: risky play needs a boost these days. Risk — risk of failure, of pain, of disappointment, of frustration — is being systematically stripped from our children's childhoods.
We need to defend our children's opportunity to fail.
We need to accept failure in our children’s play as a normal, casual, and important aspect of healthy development. Defeat and frustration are critical to learning. Children not only learn, over time, whatever skill they are experimenting with, but also how to cope with failure.
I got fired up about this topic after listening to this podcast episode twice in a row last week. It's a conversation between Dr. Becky (a clinical psychologist) and her guest Jonathan Haidt (a social psychologist) who recently wrote a book titled, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Yikes, right? The podcast itself is actually quite actionable and I recommend a full listen, but one of the main points is:
We are, collectively, over-supervising in the real world and under-supervising in the digital realm - and both choices are harming our children.
While I don't think social media poses much immediate risk to infants and toddlers (outside of their parents being transfixed and unintentionally still-facing them while staring at their shiny rectangles) I'm always trying to take what's out there in the Parenting Sphere and backward plan down to infancy to figure out what, if anything, we can apply in these early years.
So let's start with what we typically think of as risky play -- pushing one's physical limits, challenging notions of safety, flirting with failure.
Risky Physical Play
When allowed time and space, typically developing children "play at the edge of their abilities." Learning through play starts in infancy as babies figure out what their bodies are capable of. During infancy, “risky play” usually poses no real physical risk to the child; rather, it’s usually the adult who experiences some risk of psychological discomfort. Let's take the first big, sexy gross motor milestone: rolling.
When my older kid was a baby experimenting with rolling, my tolerance for his frustration was tested. He'd roll from his back to his belly and pin his arm. He'd scream. I'd get down on the floor next to him and try my best to use the powers of "RIE" to get us both through it, saying things like: "I see you rolled over and now your arm is stuck." I'd let him struggle for awhile then I'd flip him back over, narrating: "it seems like you're pretty stuck, I'm going to help you roll back over." Then, inevitably, he'd roll back and pin his arm again! In watching him experiment repetitively, I realized that he was actually being incredibly persistent, he was just loud, SO FREAKING LOUD, while trying.
It was uncomfortable for me to hear him struggle, but over time I realized that learning to roll wasn't something I could lecture him through. Even if I unpinned his arms for him (it would be quieter for sure, but also psychologically easier because he'd appear "happy") I couldn't teach him the skill through active manipulation of his body - he eventually needed to learn how to roll and get his arms unstuck on his own. I tried to be present, my body on the floor, proximal and available but not overly intervening. I tried to bear witness: not distracting from his effort, but empathetic to the struggle. I tried to keep an eye on his cues and the clock in an effort to understand where he was in his cycles of feed, wake, sleep to have a better understanding of his capacity for challenge, but ultimately he had to do it on his own and it was through this trial and error that he learned. It would have been easier if he just flipped over and smiled, which he did eventually, but not after many, many "failures."
Beginning with early motor milestones is probably a helpful place to start because even if there isn't a risk of getting hurt, there is a risk of failure. There's a risk of frustration. And because children are intrinsically motivated by challenges, there's a huge amount of learning that happens in these moments - not only for our child, but for us, as parents. When should we intervene? Should we scoop them up and pop them on the boob to comfort them? Has their effort actually made the hungry and a caloric break is in order? How should we intervene? How can we be responsive without rescuing them from all struggle? What sounds indicate that the baby wants help and which sounds indicate purposeful, persistent effort? Of course I can't answer any of these questions for you because the learning will be so individualized, so tailored to your child-parent dyad's communication, the time of day, the amount of sleep the child has had, your bandwidth, your audience, etc.
After learning to roll and crawl, children learn to climb (often before they learn to walk). In my play space, I have several gross motor structures, including a Pikler Triangle: a wooden climbing structure like the one shown below. The Pikler commonly offers children a first encounter with what some might consider “risky play” in the typical sense — there is a risk of failing through falling, a risk of getting hurt.
I spend a lot of time spotting children on this piece of equipment. I'll intervene if they fall from too far up or pass through the point of heightened awareness toward that frozen-up realm of fear. I want them to experience loss of balance and small falls. I want them to experience "failure" (see this video on how to spot, not stress). It's not only about increasing motor dexterity and judgment skills, but it's also about an existential trust in one's self as resilient.
It feels important to note here that I also don’t encourage them to do something they aren’t ready for, or '“good job” them when they complete something they are ready for. I’ll smile and acknowledge their accomplishment if they look at me (“you climbed up and over” and I often eye the parent across the room like, “woo!”) but I try to make the effort more about the budding sense of self-efficacy and genuine self-esteem in the child rather than an other-oriented performance.
“Learning to fall, getting up again, and moving on, is the best preparation for life.” -Magda Gerber
Psychologically “Risky” Play
I'm not sure that we should, but what if we thought of puzzles as risky play? What if we saw the risk of (or actual) frustration as an important part of the learning process, not something that needed to be avoided and maybe not even something that we needed to breathe through in order to have it pass as quickly as possible? I have a sense that our tolerance for frustration is lower these days and I think it's because many members of society are having fewer kids and doing more capital P “Parenting” which generally translates into Hands-On, Do Something Parenting.
Because infants and toddlers are nearly always supervised (for good reason, though a Yes Space can allow for a bit of psychologically and physically safe solitude every now and then) any sign of frustration might lead to a parent jumping in. And this hypothetical parent (me sometimes) might try to intervene for my kid’s sake, but, let’s be honest, my own, too: “I see you’re frustrated. Do you want to take a break? Do you want to try a different strategy.” I think all of this is fine, probably even good, when we’re present and thoughtful. But I also think it’s important to give children enough alone time, enough solitude that they are allowed the time and space to puzzle things out (the literal puzzle, sure, but also how to handle the frustration of not getting it right away) truly on their own.
Unsupervised outdoor play used to offer our children many authentic problems to solve and I’m very aware that our society’s constant supervision and near-totally indoor lives are preventing some important lessons from being learned. That’s why I’m writing this: I really think it will take some intentional non-intervention to give our children the important experience of some (safe, casual) failure, and practice not seeing it as tragic.
I’m not talking about ignoring them or artificially creating struggle so they can pull themselves up by the bootstraps they don’t even have— please believe me when I tell you that I know the importance of warm, attuned responsiveness. Allowing a child to struggle enough that they bend, rather than break, requires confidence in one’s child, but also one’s self.
Practical Life Skills as “Risky” Play?
What if we thought of practical life skills as risky play, considering there are usually elements of failure involved? When you ask a one or two year old to crack an egg, there will likely be shell shards. When you let a baby self-feed, there will be mush and mess as the child "fails" to put all the food directly into their mouth. When we offer an open glass cup (instead of a sippy cup) to a young toddler, chances are it will spill sometimes or the glass might fall and break. When we invite young children to go diaper free so that they can begin to experience the feeling of elimination, there are going to be "misses” and messes. Each of these opportunities provides the child with data. I'm not sure when we became so intolerant of mistakes.
Lucky is the child whose parents watches them in order to figure out what might (even with mistakes) be in their zone of proximal development. This isn't about pushing children to be more independent before they are ready. Rather, it's about holding mindsets - genuine beliefs that our children are resilient, capable, and ever-learning from failure. Another hugely important component is preparing environments that set the child up for physical safety and "success" when failures inevitably happen.
Because I often joke that I’m sponsored by rags because I try to embrace autonomy and the mistakes that come with it, I'll leave you with this photo from my kid's Montessori classroom - a very intentionally “prepared environment.” I picked her up the other day and she accidentally spilled some water on the floor. She then went over to fetch a brown "floor towel,” wiped it up, and put it on the laundry drying rack. The practicality of the color coded cleaning cloths (the distinction between table towels and floor towels) really blew my mind and felt like such a respectful way to embrace childhood risk and repair.
I wonder what it would feel like to grow up with parents who expected and accepted failure?
Great piece of writing, thank you Courtney! I also listened to the same Dr.Becky episode TWICE!
I wonder what you think how one's culture/boundaries around using smartphones in the presence of our babies affects them, and is relevant for the debate on how/when teenagers should have access to smartphones.
Love the final question. So much to chew on here, I love it!! Thanks.