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We’ve been chatting to Thérèse Hoyle, Education Consultant, Play Expert and Author, about the PLAY system in the brain and the role of risky play!

During a study trip to Finland last November, I observed a small child, likely no more than 5 years old, climbing onto a rock that was approximately 6 to 7 feet high. From the top, the child felt on top of the world, calling out to the adult below, “Look at me! Look how high I am! I can see the trees!” Their excitement and joy reflected a sense of achievement for accomplishing this challenge on their own.

This experience exemplifies what is known as risky play. While the term may evoke images of dangerous activities due to the word "risk," it is important to understand that risky play is not about danger. Instead, it involves challenges, excitement, exploration, and learning, contributing to a child's growth and development.

Risky play is play that most of us would have done as kids: going outside, climbing trees, climbing on or over things, exploring, jumping, balancing, and running. It has an element of fun, risk, and excitement, with the possibility of injury, such as falling when running fast, a bruise, or a small scratch or cut from climbing a tree. What risky play looks like varies from child to child, depending on age and size.

For some younger children, this may simply involve climbing up on a slightly raised platform, balancing on something height-appropriate, or playing with loose parts like building with twigs and sticks. For other children, it may involve den building, bucket stilts, rolling down hills, or climbing trees. This is where adults can support age-appropriate and size-appropriate risky play and assess whether the play is hazardous or not.

Why is risky play important for children?

The evidence suggests risky play is beneficial and important for children’s development in many ways. It supports gross and fine motor skills, physical and mental health and wellbeing, but not only that it supports building confidence, resilience, developing problem solving skills, looking at how to work with challenges and overcome them, it often includes collaboration with peers, developing social skills, teamwork, and communication skills. Current research suggests the PLAY system (common to all mammals) may be especially important in the epigenetic development of the neocortex, a part of the brain that has been shown to play an influential role in sleep, memory and learning processes and is one of the Subdomains that underpins a Motional Snapshot.

What are some of the benefits of risky play?

It supports children in exploring and developing their natural curiosity.

It can help with building confidence and self-responsibility; a child can learn to navigate risks, what they are capable of, how to overcome challenges and solve problems. It can help to build resilience if something doesn’t work, how to look at another way of doing it, or learning to accept that it is not possible, learning to be okay with failure, to not give up and grow from it.

Play can build social skills, as children learn how to work together, build and develop connections and friendships, build trust, support each other, learn how to keep themselves and each other safe, and develop communication and teamwork skills. It can also support physical development, with fine and gross motor skills. Risky play includes things like running, jumping, climbing, and building, which is important for a child’s physical development, fitness, and emotional and mental health and wellbeing.

How can we support risky play with children?

As adults, we can often be over cautious with children playing, which is completely understandable as we love our children and don’t want any harm to come to them. Many practitioners and advocates of risky play suggest being mindful of the language we use to support children in their risky play. For example, instead of saying ‘watch out, don’t do that, be careful’, we can swap this for language such as;

How are you going to …..?
Take your time
What are you planning to do next?
Do you feel safe?
Where do you need to put your foot / hand?
Do you need any help / support?

Risky play does not involve putting children at risk but rather allowing them to develop their physical and mental health and wellbeing, build a variety of supportive skills, and have fun while doing it.

As adults, we can risk-assess the play before the children perform it to determine whether it’s suitable, age-and-stage-appropriate, and worth doing.

We can also assess the benefits, why the children are performing it, what the risks are, and how we, as educators, can manage and support safe, risky play!

Thérèse Hoyle is CEO of Therese Hoyle Consultancies Ltd and founder of the Positive Playtime Essentials and Award Programmes, the Lunchtime Supervisor Superhero programme and the Positive Playtime Online Academy.

The Positive Playtime Programmes support primary schools to dramatically improve the quality of day-to-day playtimes and lunchtimes, with a consequent beneficial impact on lunchtime behaviour, engagement, learning, social, emotional, mental and physical health and wellbeing.

She is also the author of 101 Playground Games (2021) and 101 Wet Playtime Games and Activities (2022), and a contributing author and co-editor of The Big Book of Whole School Wellbeing (2021) all of which you can find in the Reads and Research section of Motional's Support Centre!

Find out more here: www.theresehoyle.com or e-mail: support@theresehoyle.com

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