In Britain’s Playgrounds, ‘Bringing in Risk’ to Build Resilience

&gt; in Shoeburyness in Southeast Britain<p>Completely off topic, but this made me chuckle, and I thought it might be interesting to point out.<p>This sounds completely weird to a British ear. For some reason, don&#x27;t ask me why, we don&#x27;t <i>ever</i> refer to North&#x2F;South&#x2F;East&#x2F;West in the context of &#x27;Britain&#x27; but only in the context of the countries within it. Southeast <i>England</i> is the &#x27;correct&#x27; phrasing.<p>Just an interesting and funny example of completey unintuitive local language quirks being exposed by an outside perspective. Of course it&#x27;s totally logical to say &#x27;Southeast Britain&#x27;, and seeing that it looks weird made me, for the first time, notice it and question why we don&#x27;t.

It&#x27;s odd that older generations feel the need to build in risk into playgrounds when any kid will be just fine pushing risk. It&#x27;s moreso overbearing parents halting their fun.<p>I remember sitting in park watching kids daring each other to climb on top of the plastic safety spiral slide and try jumping down the ground from 15 feet up. Eventually a gaggle of adults kept lining up to talk them down to be more safe.<p>Not to mention kids these days are under a massive amount of social stigmatization through social media that permeates their daily lives. At least back in the day when you got beat up at school you could go home and feel safe for a bit. Nowadays your bullies come home alongside your Facebook account.<p>I tend to believe that the resilience built into the current teenage generation is unprecedented. When I see others complaining about a lack of grit in kids I see a generation that has developed a strong set of coping mechanisms for a reality older generations are simply blind to.

<i>&gt;One such audit found that a popular climbing structure, open since the early 1980s, presented “a medium to high risk potential for severe to fatal injuries”</i><p>Ah, they must mean the <i>tree.</i> Popular since 198000000 BCE.

Tokyo (not sure about the rest of Japan) has similar with a number of &#x27;play parks&#x27; within larger parks. Rope swings, makeshift slides, saws, hammers and nails abound. The kids come back smelling of smoke from the communal bonfire though...<p>See <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;playpark.jp" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;playpark.jp</a> (Japanese only)

&gt; (In the United States, a country with far higher litigation costs, government agencies overseeing play safety are not known to have made any such changes.)<p>That&#x27;s the first time in a while that the New York Times has really made me laugh. The article pictures British schools as a model of educational enlightenment, and takes a swipe against an obsessively litigious culture that&#x27;s seeping into the lives of infants. It shows how implementing commonsensical educational policies is a bipartisan issue, and that the wider litigious culture is the roadblock to helping kids develop well-tuned resilient and risk-taking behaviours.

I showed this article to my Commonwealth wife and she chuckled. Most Brits recall school as a place where physical and verbal bullying is commonplace, much more prevalent than is perceived in other countries. Maybe the playgrounds are sanitized, but the risk of physical injury at the hands of ones&#x27; school mates is ever-present.

The next step would be to remove all those Safety signs (e.g. mind the step, look left, drowning risk in front of the sea... ) in the streets and see how many people die due to their absence.

Shoeburyness, home of the MoD testing range. I moved to the Kent coast as a child. I was surprised while playing on the school playground that none of my friends even noticed the deep booming sound every few minutes. The range must be 50 miles away across the estuary but it&#x27;s still loud enough to rattle windows.

At eight, I was playing with WWII ammunition. I mean, it was everywhere. But damn, that was stupid.

It sounds like a specific playground for parents that want to feel special. It&#x27;s a ridiculous idea, and dangerous for the kids.