Ways Outdoor Risk-Taking Play Builds Toddler Development
Outdoors, your child and their creative brain have many more opportunities to explore risk-taking play. Let’s talk about what risk-taking play is, why it is incredible for your toddler’s development, how you can ease your worries, and finally some examples of risk-taking play outdoors.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a helicopter parent, you may still have hesitations about your toddler playing outdoors. Once children learn how to walk, and sometimes even before, they naturally begin climbing, sliding, hanging, and jumping. The outdoors may seem a dangerous place for this behavior compared to your safer, child-proofed home. You probably already know where in your home your child is most likely to climb or jump, but the outdoors has more unknowns.
What is Risk-Taking Play
Risk-taking (also known as dangerous or risky) play occurs when a child is testing the physical limits of what their body can do while playing. Children might explore how high they can climb, jump, or swing from. They might also carry or move heavy objects, initiate rough-and-tumble play with peers, or begin exploring further and further away from parents when in a new environment. Running down hills, balancing on the curbs of sidewalks, or jumping into a pool are all examples of risk-taking play. As a parent, this will bring about feelings of both awe and fear. Your brave and wild child is learning and growing, but your protective instinct also wants to keep them safe.
Why Toddlers Need Risk-Taking Play
Risk-taking play promotes your child’s development. Physically, your child’s body will get stronger, faster, and healthier as they play and push their body to its limits. Cognitively, your child’s brain will develop cause and effect and problem-solving skills. Emotionally, your child will build self-esteem as they test new skills and feel pride at their successes. When children are limited in risk-taking play, it will impact them later in life. Even preschool-age children who did not participate in risk-taking play as a toddler will have less self-confidence and will shy away from trying new things. An entire childhood of self-doubt, apprehension, and fear will follow a child into adulthood. Children can grow up feeling as if new activities seem impossible and the fear of failure will be overwhelming. Risk-taking play as a toddler is literally how humans learn to fall down and get back up over and over. It is how humans learn that we will be okay if we fail.
How to Handle Your Own Fear
Worry and apprehension about your toddler’s risk-taking play outdoors is entirely normal. Your instinct to protect your child comes from the deep love you have for them. Allowing risk-taking play is one of the first times you will have to practice overriding your own worry in order to let your child learn and grow. I recommend starting with these questions if you are feeling apprehensive about risk-taking play.
- What did risk-taking play look like in my childhood and how did my parents respond to it?
- As an adult, how do I respond to tasking risks?
- What is my child learning when they climb this, jump from that, fall down, run fast….
- What are the limits I can apply to certain risk-taking activities, but still let my child play?
6 Pack
from: The Dough Project
What You Can Control
You do not have to relinquish all control, but it is also important to pause before always making your child to stop playing. If the situation can be adjusted, how can you make it safer in a way that still lets your child take risks? A gentle redirection could work, but you also don’t want to transfer your fear onto your child if the situation is not dangerous. A big reaction from you may even have the opposite effect and make the child more interested in the action you are redirecting from.
If you have been hesitant to let your child do risk-taking play, then it is probably safest for you to both start with small steps. If your child can practice jumping from low heights onto pillow, they will build skills to jump from higher heights onto grass. If your child can practice climbing onto chairs and furniture in your home, they can build skills to climb playground equipment. Let your child run fast on flat, even surfaces so they can build the skills to run across different terrains and up and down hills. Each time you have the instinct to stop them, and they are not in immediate danger, reflect on one of the questions posed above.
Using open-ended questions while your child plays lets you guide them and help them problem solve. I can even send you a free list of open-ended questions use. Sign up here:
Personal Connections to Your Child’s Risk-Taking Play
Maybe you had a childhood full of risk-taking play, so you want to pass this experience on to your child. Or maybe you know you are very fearful about taking risks in your adult life, and you do not want to pass this down to your child. Maybe your parent showed you love as a child by being overly protective, but do you want to show love this way? Or do you want to show love through teaching your child that you trust them? Try to appreciate what your child is learning in the moment. You may even be inspired by their brave, free spirit.
Examples of Risk-Taking Play for Toddlers
(And Why It Should Be Outdoors)
If you do feel the strong urge to control the risk-taking play your toddler does, you can plan the activities ahead of time and provide the guidance for them. Below are some examples of what risk-taking play outdoors looks like. Choose and adapt one of these activities and introduce it to your toddler. Toddlers naturally seek out risk-taking play, so if you are not providing the opportunities, children will find it themselves.
- Running Fast – Especially up and down hills
- Climbing – tree stumps, playground equipment, hills, and steps
- Jumping – from tree stumps, playground equipment, into water (with adult supervision and floaties, of course!)
- Balancing – on fallen logs, balance beams, or low ledges
- Carrying/Rolling/Pushing Heavy Objects – rocks, bricks, buckets of water, tree branches
- Spinning
- Hanging
- Swinging
- Chasing
- Rough-and-Tumble Play
Moving the risk-taking play outdoors allows children to build an understanding of how their body relates to the natural features around them. How heavy are branches or rocks, how sturdy are stumps, how does my body move in water, how does gravity feel when I jump or run down hills. These are things that cannot be learned as well in an indoor environment of plastic toys, carpeted floors, and padded furniture.
Summing This All Up
Risk-taking play is a critical part of your toddler’s physical, cognitive, and emotional development. It is how they learn their own physical limits. Toddlers will learn problem solving and cause and effect. Emotionally, toddlers will build their self-confidence and begin to identify themselves as a brave, strong humans. As terrifying as it may be as a parent to let your toddler participate in risk-taking play, you can ease your own mind through self-reflection and intentionally creating opportunities for your child to build their skills as they grow. Then you can stand in awe and appreciation of their skills and bravery. You know you helped them establish this foundation that will follow them for a lifetime.
Excellent article that summarizes the benefits for children and from a parental perspective.
Thank you Sandra! I hope you found information that can help you. I’d love if you could share this with others 🙂