Keywords

And in the days that followed, Ronia watched out for what was dangerous and practiced not being frightened. She was to be careful not to fall in the river, Matt had said, so she hopped, skipped, and jumped warily over the slippery stones along the riverbank, where the river rushed most fiercely. She was to stay by the waterfalls. To reach them, she had to climb down Matt’s Mountain, which fell in a sheer drop to the river. That way she could also practice not being frightened. The first time it was difficult; she was so frightened that she had to shut her eyes. But bit by bit she became more daring, and soon she knew where the crevices were, where she could place her feet, and where she had to cling with her toes in order to hang on and not pitch backward into the rushing water. (…) and in the end she was like a healthy little animal, strong and agile and afraid of nothing. (Lindgren, 1983, p. 17)

Although risk often involves the possibility of negative experiences, there are also many situations where we consciously expose ourselves to risk with the aim of achieving something positive. We may climb a tree to feel joy, even though it is safer to stand still on the ground. The question is how taking risks—for example, through risky play—can be good for experiences, development, and learning. However, it can potentially lead to injury and sometimes even death. In evolution, it is often thought that if the usefulness (development or learning) of a type of behaviour outweighs the costs (injury or death), then the behaviour will be maintained and attractive to us through natural selection (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2000). We will continue to do things that are good for us in the long run. In adulthood, we depend on being able to adapt to new situations and problems, and then we deal with challenges. This is the knowledge and competence we build through childhood and the rest of our life. If we had never been willing to take risks, we would have never learned to walk, run, swim, ride a bike, boil eggs, invite someone on a date, drive a car, or do many other activities that involve some form of risk. All of these activities have one common element: For each of them, there are a number of unknown factors that make us uncertain if we will succeed or fail. The positive aspects of risky play can thus be many, and they can be seen from different perspectives, ranging from the individual experience of the person doing it to a more social relevance as part of risk management and accident prevention.

Joy and Good Experiences

Aldis (1975) pointed out that much of children’s play is related to fear and that young children actively seek out thrill and excitement in risky situations such as swinging, climbing, and jumping from heights. Children mainly seek excitement and risk in their play because they are provided with good and positive experiences such as fun, joy, excitement, thrill, pride, and self-confidence (Coster & Gleave, 2008). The fact that the outcome of the play is positive is not 100 per cent certain; it depends on whether the child masters the risk. Failure to do so can lead to unpleasant and negative experiences such as fear, anxiety, and perhaps injury. In addition, the level of excitement must be high in order to achieve the most intense and wonderful feeling as possible. This means that when the scariest risk is mastered, the positive feeling of mastery is better and more intense. The point of risky play is to balance on the edge between intense excitement and pure fear—one feels both emotions at the same time. Children’s descriptions of what they experience through thrilling and risky play show that they have great pleasure in feeling both joy and fear and often both of these feelings at the same time (Sandseter, 2009b). The children describe this as “scaryfunny.”

It’s fun to make long sticks from straws and use them in play fencing, but it’s a little scary too … but it’s more fun than scary, actually, and it tickles my stomach when I do it! (Maria, five years old)

In fact, one of the main goals of this type of activity is to balance on the edge between intense exhilaration and fear, without it becoming too scary and switching over to pure fear, so that they pull away and end the play (Sandseter, 2009b). The contrast between mastery/injury and excitement/fear gives a thrilling feeling of fearful joy that few other types of play can provide. The chance of experiencing fear and possible harm is what one “pays” to experience the intense excitement and well-being it gives to master something one would not ordinarily dare to do. This was indicated quite well by a boy who described what he preferred to do in play and activities: “The funniest thing I know is what I almost don’t dare to do” (Mjaavatn, 1999, p. 53). Children often choose challenging climbing, sliding, and sledging at high speed and in creatively dangerous ways to increase the physical and mental exhilaration in an activity so that the experience will be extra intense. They often consciously increase the risk level in the play situation by, for example, increasing the height, speed, and degree of difficulty in the activity (Sandseter, 2009a). Children who experience excitement and joy when they engage in risky play, on the verge of danger and fear but with joy and mastery as the dominant emotion, will continue to seek out this type of play again and again.

As children age, they still need excitement. Hansen and Breivik’s (2001) study of twelve- to sixteen-year-olds showed that risk-seeking young people were primarily involved in positive risk activities such as skiing, cycling, and climbing. However, this study also showed that young people who lacked opportunities for positive risk instead often engaged in more negative forms of risk, such as petty crime, intoxication/drinking, and speeding violation. Similarly, interviews with young people in prison have shown that they had often committed crimes because they sought excitement in an otherwise unexciting everyday life situation where there was a lack of leisure activities that provided them the risk experiences and thrills they needed (Robertson, 1994). In the same way, it has been warned that if we make all play environments safe but boring and limit children’s opportunities to engage in risky play, then children will seek out other and more unsafe places where they can experience risk. For example, construction sites and train tracks are other places we would rather not have them play in. Having the opportunity to experience some risk and excitement in life is therefore important and provides good experiences, both for children and for young people, and as an extreme consequence, depriving them of the opportunity to do so can have negative consequences.

Life Mastery

The Ministry of Education and Research in Norway describes life mastery as having good mental and physical health, as well as experiencing well-being, joy of life, mastery, and a sense of self-worth. In such an understanding, the educational system should be a place that gives children both security and challenges:

Life mastery is about being able to understand and be able to influence factors that are important for mastering one’s own life. The theme will contribute to the students learning to deal with success and adversity, and personal and practical challenges in the best possible way. (Norwegian Ministry of Education, 2017a, p. 13)

The kindergarten should be a safe and challenging place where children can try out different aspects of interaction, community and friendship. Children should receive support in overcoming adversity, dealing with challenges and getting to know their own and others’ feelings. (Norwegian Ministry of Education, 2017b, p. 11)

Kindergartens and schools thus have a responsibility to ensure that children and young people face challenges and have the freedom to explore them and learn to master them. At the same time, this must take place within a safe framework. When children seek out risk naturally in play, they do so in a progressive way. They do not simply climb all the way to the top of a tree and jump down, but they largely understand their own competence and usually adapt their activity to an appropriate progression with regard to motor skills and risk management skills (Sandseter, 2009c). Children usually seek challenges adapted to their own skill level—challenges where there are good opportunities for them to have new mastery experiences. In this way, children play, learn, and develop within what Csikszentmihalyi calls the flow state. According to Csikszentmihalyi, it is optimal for development and learning that we are in a flow state where there is a balance between the skills we have and the challenges (degree of difficulty) we are faced with in the situation. In this state, boredom as a result of the task or challenge being too easy is avoided, and at the same time the task is not so difficult that it becomes an anxious situation where you do not have a chance to master it. When children are in a flow state, they have good conditions for learning and developing new abilities, and it will provide an experience of joy and mastery. When they are in the flow state, they forget time and place and “float” into a purposeful and pleasurable condition. Play is a flow experience in the true sense of the word (Csikszentmihalyi, 1977).

Experiencing mastery of activities and situations that children initially perceived as a little scary provides useful knowledge about their own skills and competence. It helps them to confirm that they are capable of handling challenges that may seem too great. This is positive for building self-confidence and gaining good self-esteem.

We were on a hike in the woods one day, and we found some fallen trees lying there. And there was a little three-year-old girl who wanted to climb up the logs, but she fell down all the time, you know. She asked for help, but I wanted her to do it herself. She wanted to get up so badly, but it was too difficult for her. They had to climb, pull themselves up and get up, and then there were some branches that you had to climb and then drop yourself down to the ground. It was not very high, but for a three-year-old it was high enough. At least it was so challenging that she couldn’t do it. But she had such courage, and she did not give up. And then she finally got up there! How proud she was! There is something about the fact that sometimes you have to practice a lot, and other times you manage things faster. So when we walked home to the kindergarten, we talked about this, and then I said, “I can’t believe you did it … you tried again and again.” Then she said, the day before she turned three years old, “But I did not give up!” Right there I got chills down my spine. And when I told her mother a few days later, the mother had tears in her eyes. (Female kindergarten teacher)

A study of children’s play in Norwegian kindergartens, both indoors and outdoors, found that risky play was positively associated with children showing strong involvement and engagement in play (Sando et al., 2021). High involvement in a situation is an indication that the learning potential in the situation is optimal (Laevers, 2000). The children are completely engrossed in what they are doing. In the same study, the results also showed that risky play had a positive correlation with well-being (Sando et al., 2021). Children thus clearly express that they thrive and have fun when they explore risk in their play. It is not difficult to understand that children become well and happy when they master something they may not have thought they should dare to do and which they may have even tried and failed at quite a few times already.

Can risk-taking be good for children’s health? One might have to assume that children who are exposed to risk also experience more injuries. A systematic review of research on the relationship between risky outdoor play and health (Brussoni et al., 2015) showed that this type of play mainly has positive health effects. This applied to both physical and psychosocial health. Children who engaged in risky play were more physically active, creative, and social than their peers who were not given the opportunity to engage in this type of play. It was thus associated with better physical and social health, social competence, and resilience. Contrary to many people’s beliefs, there was no association between risky play and fracture injuries, which are often a presumed result of play at great heights, and rough-and-tumble play was not associated with aggressive behaviour. No evidence was found that a higher number of serious injuries occurred in risky play compared with other play. One would think that playgrounds that invite more risky play cause more accidents and injuries. However, a study showed there were actually less injuries in so-called adventure playgrounds (where children explore different types of loose materials, build structures themselves, and play with fire, water, and earth) compared to a regular standardized playground (Leichter-Saxby & Wood, 2018).

Physical Development and Motor Competence

Risky play often involves a certain degree of physical activity and active use of the body. Research has shown that there is a connection between risky play and a high level of physical activity (Sando et al., 2021). Risky play is a type of play and activity that involves, among other things, height, speed, and adaptation of bodily movements. Children engage in sliding, spinning around, jumping, falling, climbing, and cycling. All of these are physical activities where the child practises and improves in a range of physical and motor skills, and they help to develop muscle strength, endurance, and bone quality (Pellegrini & Smith, 1998). The fact that children seek excitement through motor and physical challenges in play is therefore also important for their physical development and the practice of ever-improving motor competence.

Research has shown that when children play in nature, in a challenging and unpredictable play environment, they acquire better motor control and higher coordination skills than those who play mostly on standardized playgrounds (Fjørtoft, 2000).

It’s about three meters, maybe; it’s not so steep. If you fall, you land in the grass. Those who master, they climb right up, and those who do not dare usually find a less steep path to get up. And those who do not dare any of those alternatives, they help to pull up those who climb. They are still part of the experience. But I think to date no one has fallen down. The group of children I have this year, they have so much fun climbing there. And then I like to sit on top with a high five when they reach the top. They give me a high-five, and then they run down to try once more. There is always a queue of children who want to climb up, so they have to use another path to get down. Then they climb up again, and then there is another high-five. There is such a strong feeling of mastery. And even those who are very careful and need a little help, they get up step by step. We, the staff, are so happy on their behalf, and the kids experience our enthusiasm because they do something that they really think is a little scary. (Female kindergarten teacher)

Children have an inherent urge to explore that which makes them constantly dare to take the risk of engaging with the unknown and untried. They develop into mastering new and difficult tasks, such as when a small child dares to rely on their own strength, gets up on their own two feet, and eventually takes the chance to lean forward and take their first unsteady steps. They dare to trust that the balance is good enough, that the strength of their legs carries the weight of the body, and that they are ready to master the challenge of taking the first step, even though they have never done this before and that the consequence of failing is to fall straight to the floor. Children practise and develop various motor skills and physical characteristics such as muscle strength and endurance through engaging in physically challenging activities and play. All such advances in children’s physical and motor development depend on them daring to take the risk of throwing themselves into new and unknown tasks, movements, and surroundings.

Another important factor in being able to master motor challenges is spatial orientation skills. Studies have shown that children who play a lot in challenging and unpredictable natural environments have a better spatial orientation competence than those who play mostly on standardized playgrounds (Fiskum, 2004). The assumption is that play in nature, including risky play, are activities where children gain experience and training in perceptual competence such as depth, shape, size, and movement perception and assessment as well as general spatial orientation skills (Rakison, 2005).

This is competence that is important for children, both in activities in childhood and later in life, to be able to assess how to move their own bodies in environments where there are other objects or other people. This becomes especially important in situations where these other objects or people are also in motion—for example, in traffic. Being able to calculate how a car or bicycle moves is crucial for them to be able to move unharmed when crossing the street.

Prevention of Anxiety

There are many indications that children also learn not to be afraid and anxious through risky play. During play, this happens quite naturally and with a natural progression of exposure to what they are initially afraid of. According to Sandseter and Kennair (2011), through play founded on their own initiative and interest, children do exactly what a therapist does to help people overcome anxiety: They approach the thing that triggers anxiety step by step, closer and closer, and gradually learn to master what they fear.

People can be afraid of, and anxious about, many things. Some fears we learn by conditioning through, for example, negative occurrences like a trip to the dentist, which some eventually experience as painful drilling or removal of a wisdom tooth. Other fears are non-associative innate tendencies, in that we, without having negative experiences with them, are sceptical and afraid of things that might be dangerous to us. Such fears already manifest themselves in infants and young children and develop naturally as an evolutionary adaptation for us to be better able to survive. However, if such fears are not resolved during childhood and rather continue into adolescence and adulthood, this can lead to fear and anxiety that inhibit normal functioning.

Some of the typical innate fears we have are those of heights, water, and separation (Poulton & Menzies, 2002). These are stimuli that children are basically sceptical and afraid of but which they seek out and explore through play. This may include climbing, playing near or in water, and going out to explore alone. They approach what they fear progressively and gradually learn to master it within the relatively safe context of play. In this way, risky play has a habituating effect on their innate fears: They do not have to fear something they have mastered. This has an anti-phobic effect (Sandseter & Kennair, 2011).

This is supported by research showing that children who have climbed a lot, bathed, and played a lot in water and experienced many planned separations from their caregivers are not to be found in the group of adolescents and adults who have a fear of heights, a fear of water, or separation anxiety (Poulton et al., 1998, 1999, 2001). This is even true if, for example, they have been seriously injured in a fall while climbing. On the contrary, those who are inhibited by anxiety about these risks have little experience with them from childhood, which may indicate that they have missed an important learning of these fears. It is therefore reasonable to assume that risky play is a natural way to reduce the innate fear of things that may be harmful to us. Exploring them through gradually enables us to master them and thus stop fearing them. This is part of getting to know our surroundings and learning what is safe and what is dangerous.

In line with this, studies from the Netherlands have shown that a so-called challenging parenting behaviour has a positive effect on children’s mental health (Majdandžić et al., 2018). The fact that parents encourage their children to seek challenges and support them, rather than preventing them, when they take risks in play and activities helps to prevent anxiety problems. Similarly, psychologists believe that risky play can be a good strategy for reducing anxiety because it can help children deal with inappropriate cognitive behavioural strategies. Such strategies are, for example, avoidance (moving away from what feels threatening), lack of coping (disaster thinking, negative focus, and inappropriate handling of stressful situations), intolerance of uncertainty (a fundamental fear of the unknown), and misinterpretation of physiological arousal (a fear of fear and misinterpretation of bodily signals such as increased heart rate) (Dodd & Lester, 2021). When children engage in risky play, such as climbing trees, cycling fast down a hill, balancing on a log, and jumping from rock to rock, they experience emotions such as fear and excitement. Dodd and Lester explained that the positive, ecstatic, and exciting experiences associated with such self-initiated play entail exposure to potentially anxious situations and thus give children the opportunity to learn about increased activation, insecurity, and mastery.

Risk Management

Taking a risk is not always about being careless or reckless but rather about taking an uncertain chance in order to achieve a specific goal. Risk management requires that we assess the likelihood of success or failure based on relevant knowledge or information related to each individual situation compared to our individual skills. It is only through meeting risks and challenges that we learn to assess risk and make realistic assessments of our likelihood of success (or failure). Therefore, risky play should not only be seen in the light of what it can contribute to children’s development but also as training in dealing with the unexpected. This is in line with kindergartens’ and schools’ responsibility in promoting children’s life skills (Ministry of Education, 2017a, 2017b). Having a body that is strong, agile, and coordinated, in addition to gaining experiences that give courage and mental resilience in the face of risky situations as well as experience in how to act in them, is crucial for children so that they can master risks in the future.

Risk management is also closely linked to risk perception—that is, how one perceives and assesses a risk. Children approach the world around them through play, they are driven by curiosity and the need for excitement, they practise dealing with risky situations in real life through play, and they discover what is safe and what is not. Children with little experience of risky situations will not necessarily have a perception of the degree of risk that corresponds to the actual danger they face. By facing dangers and risks in play, the child will gain experience with risk, and the child’s subjective perception of the risk will be more similar to the objective, real risk in the situation. In Belgium, Lavrysen et al. (2017) conducted a study in which they found that an experimental group of children, who engaged regularly in risky play, significantly improved their assessment of risk compared to a control group that did not engage in risky play. Therefore, children must, through play and activity, be given the opportunity to develop a realistic sense of risk. From a risk theory perspective, through experience with risky situations, children will practise a more realistic perception of the objective and actual risk in the situation and thus be better able to choose appropriate reactions and actions to master the risk. Boyesen (1997) was critical of the overemphasis on physical safety measures in children’s environments because she claimed that it can reduce the child’s own sensory-motor skills. She further explained that children who are accustomed to dangerous places being fenced in will be exposed to a greater danger the day the fence is gone. At the same time, by having been “tested” in risky situations in the past, they will also have acquired the physical skills that enable a correct reaction, just as we saw in the story about Ronia practising fearlessness and not falling into the river at the beginning of this chapter (Lindgren, 1983).

When children are able to master challenges in their environment, safety automatically increases. Through experiencing risky situations, children gain a broad perceptual experience about both the level of risk in various situations and what actions are necessary to handle the risk in a good way. At the same time, this is a dilemma for adults who are responsible for children, such as parents, grandparents, kindergarten instructors, and schoolteachers: For children to learn to master risks, they must necessarily be allowed to approach risks. If we protect children from exploring risks, we are probably doing them a disservice by robbing them of important learning and development.

To Prove the Absence of Anything That Could Have Been

One of the challenges in the argument that children must be given the opportunity to engage a lot in free, outdoor, and risky play is that it is often opposed by those who disagree with so-called “hard facts.” It is quite easy to count the number of accidents and injuries there are in play, on playgrounds, in forests, and in natural playscapes, as well as how many children have been kidnapped when they have been allowed to move around freely in the local environment. For those who want to focus on the benefits of play, risk experiences, exciting emotions, and well-being, the challenge is much more difficult. How can one “prove” that children avoid, for example, injuring themselves or being kidnapped precisely because they have been allowed to engage in risky play and they practise better risk management and independence? This is a difficult task. It may seem that all of the good things about play and risk are difficult to measure, whereas the negative effects, such as accidents, injuries, and costs, are easy to measure and are therefore experienced as much more real (Ball, 2002). Play has a number of positive aspects and benefits, but most of them are intangible and difficult to measure. One can easily count deviations and damage, but there are few who count friendship, joy, and mastery.

There are also obvious ethical problems in conducting studies that are designed for children to take risks (with the potential for harm), just to see what effect it has. In the same way, it is problematic to restrict children from play in order to assess the results. There are also challenges in finding scientific and reliable ways to measure the long-term effects of risky play, as well as what to measure later in life to gain this insight. Nevertheless, research on risky play is a fairly new and promising field where we are constantly gaining new knowledge.

Summary

On the one hand, risky play involves potential costs through the possibility of physical injury. On the other hand, research has identified a number of positive effects of children seeking risk in play. In this chapter, we have shed light on the positive and exciting experiences children have when they step by step approach risk and experience situations that they may not have thought they had the courage to throw themselves into. Risk builds self-confidence and good health and provides joy and well-being. The fact that children have the opportunity to meet, explore, and overcome physical challenges and activities they were initially afraid of through play will thus contribute positively to their physical and mental health. They become physically strong, agile, and healthy, and they gain mental strength and an increased belief in their own mastery.