Bang, Scrape & Tumble: Letting kids learn risky lessons in a stubbornly scripted world

The vacant lot alongside the residential road was like a thousand other lots that spoil the aesthetics of well-trimmed neighborhoods everywhere. There was no landscaping, no turf, no splash of annual color—just mounds of gravel, jumbles of discarded branches, and clumps of ragged summer weeds clawing up through last year’s detritus.

Leaves crunched underfoot as the ten-year-old stepped off the mowed safety of her front lawn to pick her way through the abandoned chaos. She bent to collect an interesting rock, paused to snap a twig that looked like it needed snapping, gave spiders a wide berth—and then stopped dead. Lodged into a hummock of dirt near her sneakers she saw something smooth, round, and glinting of gold. When she picked it up, it felt heavy in her hand—a coin—but not like any she’d seen before. She rubbed away the crusted dirt and found an image of a fierce bird, and what looked like an ocean wave arching over bold text. 50 GROSZY, it said.

Squeezing the find in a tight fist, she scanned the area with wide-eyed wonder. What was this place?

News of the discovery spread like wildfire. Kids from across the neighborhood poured in to scavenge for treasure; turning stones, crawling under branches, sifting dirt with kitchen colanders. It had been an international bank heist, some said (since the first coin turned out to be Polish), and this is where they stashed the loot. Or perhaps a miser buried his life savings, andthen died.

It could have happened.

More coins turned up—silver, bronze, copper, all with foreign lettering, all with unfamiliar images stamped into bright metal—baffling, tantalizing, and out in the sun for anyone to find.

Through a nearby window Dave Francis peeked occasionally at the action, entirely pleased with himself. He had come across the forgotten Mason jar of foreign coins (worth a total of $1.50, he estimates) and decided to scatter them into the empty lot across from his house. He wouldn’t say that he had no idea that this act would cause such a local kerfuffle. He knew it would. Had hoped for it, in fact.

By day, Francis is USU Extension’s director of Utah 4-H and Youth Programs. In his free time, he is a conniving mystery-builder in his Woods Cross, Utah, neighborhood. In both roles, he said, he is after the Spark.

There is a certain moment in childhood—you might remember it—when you forget about the toil, the checklist to complete. You set aside the uncomfortable burn of muscle, the strain of thought. It’s that moment when you feel something propelling your actions forward, like a bird riding an updraft of air. The term “fun” is inadequate here—this is not entertainment or distraction alone. For some kids it is a sense of discovery, for others it's adventure, danger, or creativity. In 4-H youth development parlance, this moment is called the Spark. It is an event or activity that pulls forward a passion, deep interest, or a sense of calling that provides a kid joy, purpose, and a direction. It’s a force to be reckoned with.

Children tend to be quite good at finding the Spark, if circumstances allow. It offers them the drive to push themselves to try something new, to put themselves “out there” despite discomfort or challenge. If they can tap into that powerful internal motivation, a kid can be a veritable engine of learning, Francis said.

Without it, though, picking up the skills necessary to be a functioning adult feels more like drudgery. So finding the Spark is pretty important.

But the world where kids can do so is shrinking. Reasons for this are complex: play spaces are getting smaller, kids’ lives are increasingly programmed, screens are ubiquitous. But there is another significant contributor: adults.

Kids and adults tend to have significantly different goals for play. Many adults design opportunities for play based primarily on keeping children safe—which is certainly a reasonable goal. But the Spark is most often found in activities that are unsupervised, exploratory, and outdoors, said Francis. It involves minor physical and emotional challenges—and it’s risky.

“Risky play can sometimes be hard for parents to swallow,” said Francis. “They think—I’m not okay with this. The kids are going to get dirty, they might get hurt, or … get some disease. I mean, all the things parents worry about."

And it can be especially hard for some, he said, because in risky play, the chance of those worrisome things happening is not zero. But they also aren’t zero in your own backyard, he is quick to add. When you consider that the skills earned through engaging in risky play are essential to a child’s development—confidence, decision-making, social nuance, finding connections to the larger world—the equation for risk begins to balance quite differently.

Life on the Lot

Consider that vacant lot across from Francis’ house. Once the kids are actually present (digging for coins, say), and perhaps two groups both want to build forts to protect their treasure, but there aren’t enough sticks to go around. How do they negotiate this? Whatever your ideas are on this point, adults, keep them to yourself. A parent might be very skilled at swooping in with tailored, practiced solutions to these kinds of complex problems—but what a huge loss it would be to take that away from a child, said Francis. Life doesn’t revolve around dictated rules. This is a chance for kids to learn negotiation, power dynamics and compromise; to practice boundaries and small group structure; to learn about how a community works and feels. If nothing else, this might be their chance to perfect the design and construction of a tiny house — who knows where else it might lead.

That tree that is too high to climb? Children need a chance to learn how to assess risk, Francis said, to experiment, problem solve, and develop both confidence and a healthy knowledge of their own limits. If they try to jump from a tree that is too high, they’ll know next time what a too-high-tree looks like. If they don’t get that chance… well, they’ll only be facing bigger “trees” as they become teens and adults. It’s better to try it now. Scrapes and bruises are badges of honor in Francis’ world, earned in “learning accidents” that can teach children what works and what doesn't. They are experiences that could ultimately prevent catastrophic accidents later through rich, nuanced practice with decision-making.

This, of course, shouldn’t turn into a Lord of the Flies situation—mentors are essential in the process. Parents and other caregivers should intervene when a situation is clearly dangerous, rather than just uncertain, said Lacee Boschetto, an assistant professor in Family and Consumer Sciences Education. They could remove obvious hazards like broken glass, but let children navigate for themselves thorny bushes and pokey sticks. Before intervening, adults could consider counting to 30, to give children a chance to assess the situation and attempt to solve it for themselves.

“It’s reasonable for parents to want to protect their children,” said Boschetto, “but risky play establishes a space for children to have authentic experiences that build their own resilience.”

The right kind of mentorship for risky play requires the humility to ask yourself “is it wrong, oris it simply not how I would do it?” said Michelle Clouse, also an assistant professor in Family and Consumer Sciences Education.

The key, they both said, is not eliminating risk altogether, but creating boundaries where exploration can freely happen. Parents and caregivers can talk through their own decision-making processes and observations to help children build their own skills in that area.

“There are so many long-term benefits of this type of skill-building,” said Boschetto. Stick with it, and parents will begin to see beyond their own discomfort and begin to get a glimpse of the long-term benefits for their kids.

Another pro tip: Adults can work on shifting their language away from fear-based warnings (You’ll crack your head open.), to facilitating assessment (What do you think will happen when you try that?), and work together with other parents and caregivers to foster environments where independent play can thrive. It takes a village to facilitate this kind of learning. The goal is to move from an "as safe as possible" mindset to an "as safe as necessary" approach, letting children navigate challenges and build their own skills, confidence, and emotional regulation, said Clouse.

“Adults shouldn’t let their own fears keep a child from exploring and creating meaning in the world around them,” she said.

But the challenge of making space for more risky play is not just a parent problem. There are deep-seated legal, design, and cultural challenges that keep our kids’ lives a little too scripted.

“The hills and hedgerows where we ran around as kids, the places that risky play could naturally happen, are persistently disappearing,” said Jake Powell, associate professor and USU Extension specialist in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning.

Powell, an expert in designing outdoor spaces for learning and play, has core memories of scrambling up steep red-rock slopes in southern Utah, jumping off crumbling ledges into emerald pools, digging toes into the thick mud along flooded side-canyons.

“It’s that kind of deep connection from my own childhood that defines who am, what I’ve chosen to focus on professionally, how I think about these spaces and advocate for them now,” he said.

Often, professional designers tend to prioritize safety over adventure, and often this results in designing play spaces with limited options for risk, he said. “We spend thousands and thousands of dollars on highly designed manufactured playground equipment, safety mats and splash pads, and then the most popular thing at the park is the broken sprinkler and resulting mud pit,” laughed Powell.

But he is careful not to oversimplify the situation—there are real barriers to purposefully creating risky play opportunities in an open space design. Legal liability constantly looms for those who manage public spaces. Playgrounds are designed to be safe for any child who dares approach—and are interesting, unfortunately, for about ten minutes to most kids, he said. It’s easy to roll your eyes at that from a distance … but much harder when you begin to ask yourself what your expectations really are when you show up in such spaces with your children.

The shortage of risky play opportunities can be especially pronounced among low-income communities, where children have fewer chances to engage with nature. We tend to outsource these kinds of enriching experiences to faraway places like public lands and national parks, which in reality, are only available to a subset of kids whose parents can afford to take a long, and increasingly expensive, vacation.

“We’ve taken the opportunity away from a lot of these children to go out and find experiences on their own,” Powell said. As a result, a deficit of learning risk assessment causes many emerging adults to withdraw from the idea of managing risk altogether, which can lead to facing adulthood with lots of anxiety or seeking out risky experiences in less constructive ways.

As communities we’ve got some tough questions to ask ourselves, said Powell. Who, ultimately, is responsible for keeping us safe? Which kids get to access open spaces to build these deep connections to the larger world?

There aren’t simple answers.

But there are a few very obtainable things communities can do now to create more opportunities for important and appropriate risky play, he said. At the top of Powell's wish list is having new neighborhoods reserve small sections of land as undeveloped open space and connect them as corridors that lead to even bigger open spaces like canyons or hillsides to provide “empty lot” experiences.

When you consider that Henry David Thoreau’s famous Spark, Walden Pond, was just two short miles from a nearby town, the prospect of keeping aside designated spaces for kids’ inspiration, growth, learning, and maturity, it seems like it could be both valuable and obtainable.

 

Leave No Trace Meets Risky Play

The Leave No Trace campaign offers a framework of outdoor ethics to minimize people's impact on natural environment, but the principles have the potential to intimidate kids’ sense of exploration and adventure. When visiting natural places, especially protected ones like state and national parks and forests, there are ways to combine the best of both worlds, according to Jordan Smith, Director of USU’s Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism.

Plan Ahead

Visit in smaller groups and choose quiet times to minimize disruptions. Bring the supplies you need to be self-sufficient, pack out trash, and know your way around.

Choose Durable Surfaces

When you are bringing kids in the backcountry, use established trails and campsites. Front-country areas (near visitor centers, in established campgrounds) can take much more of a child-exploratory beating. Teach kids the difference between these types of sites.

 

Dispose of Waste Properly

Go before you go, go. Visit a bathroom before you head out. In many places in the West, it’s best to dig a cat hole 6-8 inches deep for solid waste, away from water, trails and campsites. In delicate environments, such as deserts and alpine forests, it’s best to pack it out.

 

Enjoy, and Then Leave Behind What You Find

Enjoy that stick, stone or pinecone, but then set it down for others to enjoy and for the environment to use. This can help your child build a sense of community around shared spaces—and offers a chance to explain cycles in natural environments.

 

Be Considerate

Be mindful of your impact on others’ experience. Help your children share space with the people you see now, and the other adventure-seekers who will come after you and far into the future.

 

Risky Play: What Can Parents Do?

 

Make Space

Talk it Out

Encourage Spark

Offer Freedom

The Laundry

 

Learn how Utah 4-H programs can help kids find their “spark”:

View Website