How Does Risky Play Benefit Child Development?

What Is Risky Play?

Risky play is thrilling, exciting play where children engage with uncertainty about the outcome. It involves a chance of physical injury—but crucially, the risk is one children can see, assess, and choose to engage with.

Research by Ellen Sandseter identifies six categories of risky play:

The Developmental Benefits

Building Risk Assessment Skills

Children who engage in risky play learn to assess situations: "Can I climb that? Is it too high? What will happen if I fall?" These skills transfer to all areas of life—crossing roads, making decisions, evaluating opportunities.

Children who are never allowed to take risks don't learn to assess them. They either become overly fearful or, lacking practice, make poor judgments when they do encounter risk.

Developing Physical Competence

Risky play builds:

• Balance and coordination: Through climbing, jumping, balancing
• Strength: Pulling up, hanging, carrying
• Spatial awareness: Judging distances, understanding body position
• Proprioception: Knowing where your body is in space

These physical skills actually reduce injury risk over time—children who can climb well fall less often.

Building Resilience and Confidence

When children successfully navigate challenges, they build genuine confidence based on actual competence. They learn: "I can do hard things. I can handle uncertainty. I can recover from setbacks."

This is different from the false confidence of constant praise—it's earned through experience.

Managing Fear and Anxiety

Research shows that children who engage in risky play have lower anxiety levels. They learn to tolerate uncomfortable feelings, manage fear, and discover that they can cope with uncertainty.

Conversely, overprotected children show higher rates of anxiety disorders—they haven't learned that they can handle challenge.

Social Development

Rough-and-tumble play and other risky play forms develop:

• Negotiation skills (setting rules, agreeing boundaries)
• Reading social cues (knowing when to stop)
• Self-regulation (managing excitement and aggression)
• Cooperation and turn-taking

Risk vs Hazard: A Critical Distinction

Good playground design maximises beneficial risk while eliminating hazards. The goal isn't to remove all possibility of injury—that's impossible and undesirable. The goal is to remove hazards while preserving the challenge children need.

What the Research Says

Key findings from research:

• Playgrounds designed to eliminate all risk show higher injury rates—children take bigger risks to find challenge
• Countries with high playground safety standards don't necessarily have lower injury rates
• Children who engage in risky play show better executive function and self-regulation
• Lack of risky play is linked to increased childhood anxiety and phobias

Implications for Playground Design

Understanding risky play changes how we design playgrounds:

• Include height: Climbing structures, elevated platforms, trees
• Allow speed: Swings, slides, running space, spinning equipment
• Create graduated challenge: Elements that can be used simply by beginners and in more challenging ways by skilled children
• Include loose parts: Materials children can manipulate, move, combine
• Allow hiding: Spaces where children can be out of direct sight
• Design for all abilities: Ensure all children can access appropriate challenge

Supporting Risky Play as Educators

• Step back: Give children space to try, fail, and try again
• Comment, don't command: "You're climbing very high" vs "Be careful!"
• Trust children's assessment: They often know their limits better than we think
• Manage your own anxiety: Children pick up on adult fear
• Focus on the child, not the activity: The same activity might be appropriate for one child and not another