The importance of risky play, and what the sector actually means by risk

What risky play means

Risky play is a term from the play research literature for play that involves uncertainty and the possibility of physical injury, and which the child seeks out for that reason. The thrill is the point. A slide that produces no apprehension has stopped being interesting.

The most widely used framework comes from Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter, whose 2007 categorisation identified six kinds:

Risk is not hazard, and the distinction does the work

The single most useful idea in this area is the separation of risk from hazard, which comes from playwork practice.

A risk is a challenge a child can see, assess and choose to take or not. A high climbing frame is a risk. The child can see how high it is, decide whether they can manage it, and stop.

A hazard is a danger the child cannot see or assess. A rotten branch that looks sound, a protruding bolt, a broken bottle in long grass, a faulty gate latch. A hazard offers no learning because it cannot be judged.

The practical rule follows directly and is used across the sector: remove hazards, keep risks. An adult's job in a play space is not to reduce challenge but to remove the dangers the child has no way of evaluating.

What the regulator actually says

This surprises people, and it is worth quoting the position accurately. The Health and Safety Executive's high level statement on children's play and leisure sets out that play is important for children's wellbeing and development, that health and safety law should not be used as an excuse to stop children experiencing challenge and risk, that the goal is to manage risk sensibly rather than to eliminate it, and that benefits should be weighed alongside risks.

That is the national regulator saying that excessive caution in play is itself a failure. It is the document to reach for when a school, setting or council refuses an activity by invoking health and safety, because the regulator has explicitly declined to support that use of its name.

Alongside it, the sector uses risk-benefit assessment rather than hazard elimination: identifying what could go wrong, identifying what the activity provides, and deciding on both. RoSPA and the wider play safety sector publish practical material on how this is done.

The developmental case, stated carefully

Here the accurate position is that the case is plausible rather than proven, and advocates frequently overstate it.

The best known proposal is the anti-phobic hypothesis, set out by Sandseter and Kennair in 2011. It argues that risky play functions as graded natural exposure: a child who repeatedly experiences height, speed and uncertainty in manageable doses becomes habituated to the associated fear, whereas a child prevented from doing so may retain those fears. It draws an explicit parallel with exposure therapy, which is a well established treatment for phobia.

The parallel is genuinely interesting and the mechanism is coherent. What does not exist is a body of trials showing that children with more risky play have less anxiety later, and it is difficult to see how such a trial could ethically be run. The evidence is largely observational, cross-sectional and confounded by everything that differs between families and communities where children play out more.

What can be said more confidently is narrower: children who are never permitted to encounter physical challenge do not get the practice in assessing it, and risk assessment is a skill like any other. That is a modest claim and it is defensible.

The injury question, addressed directly

Risky play does produce injuries. Most are minor: grazes, bruises, the occasional fracture from a fall. The relevant comparison is not with zero injury but with the alternative, and the alternative carries its own costs, including the physical inactivity discussed in the article on outdoor play and fitness.

Some things are not risk and should not be defended as such. Head injury from a fall onto concrete is not a graded learning experience, which is why surfacing standards exist. Drowning is not a risk a young child can assess, which is why water requires an adult within arm's reach. Strangulation from cords and entrapment in gaps are hazards, not challenges. The framework is not an argument for indifference; it is an argument for putting effort where it changes outcomes.

What this looks like in practice

Three adjustments cover most of it.

Change what you say. "Be careful" gives a child no information. Naming the specific thing does: that branch is thinner than it looks, the rock is wet, notice where your feet are. It transfers the assessment rather than the anxiety.

Do not lift a child into a position they cannot reach themselves. A child who climbs to a height under their own power has demonstrated the strength and judgement to be there. A child placed there by an adult has not, and cannot get down.

Let them practise stopping. The skills being learned include stopping, changing direction and getting down, and those need the same practice as going up. An adult who intervenes at the top of every climb removes the descent, which is the harder half.

When adults disagree about this

Disagreement between parents, or between a parent and a setting, about acceptable risk is common and rarely resolved by evidence, because it is usually a difference in tolerance rather than in information.

What helps is being specific. "Too dangerous" is not discussable. "I am worried about the drop onto the paving" is, because it identifies something that can be checked, changed or accepted. Settings that use risk-benefit assessment will usually share the assessment, and reading it is more productive than arguing about principle.