What Children Lose When We Make Them Safe

Simon Knight, Generation Youth Issues

Strangers, Traffic and Accidents

Paper for Play Wales conference, 12 and 13 June 2002

Today, parents and adults in general perceive that children are more at risk now than they were themselves, as youngsters. I disagree with this. I say that children have never been as safe or as healthy as the current generation are. The facts speak for themselves.

The two biggest worries that parents have are:

1. Abduction and murder by a stranger
2. Road traffic.

Abductions and murders of children by strangers are extremely rare events. The rates at which they occur have also remained largely unchanged for the last 50 years: about 7 murders and 60 abductions per year on average. Remembering that in the UK there are about 12 million children.

The numbers of children killed or seriously injured in road traffic accidents has been falling since the mid 1980's. Both deaths and serious injuries have halved since 1985.

Despite the facts however, most parents interviewed in studies, are responding to their fears by increasingly restricting their children's outdoor play. Children's activities are more and more being structured and organised by adults.

For example, consider the free play range of children- the radius around the home to which children can roam alone. It has been calculated that for a nine year old this has shrunk to a ninth of what it was in 1973. ( A thorough study of children's licenses can be found here: Hillman, 1990, "One False Move", Policy Studies Institute).

Paralleled with parental paranoia about the vulnerability of their children, is the trend that sees any risk to children as unacceptable and all accidents as preventable.

Frank Furedi, (author of "Culture of Fear" and "Paranoid Parenting"), Scotland on Sunday 9/9/01, states that,

"Physical injury to children is no longer seen as an unexceptional fact of growing up."

The BMJ, last year, (June "01) banned the use of the word "accident", because all events have a root cause and therefore can be prevented.

Paralysed parents, a safe environment is a restricted one.

There are important consequences linked to this "Culture of Fear":

1. A drive to remove any element of risk from children's play grounds. This renders them unexciting and unchallenging.
See, Moorcock, "Swings and Roundabouts", Sheffield Hallam University.

2. A tendency to seek to apportion blame to local authorities, education staff or sports instructors for accidents. This causes a chilling effect on activity providers due to the threat of litigation and is leading to a reduction of the quality, quantity and variety of experiences available to children.
See, Furedi, 1999, "Courting Mistrust", Centre for Policy Studies.

3. A climate has been created in which unsupervised play is regarded as high risk and parents and teachers who allow it are regarded as irresponsible.
See, any publication on this subject.

These tendencies are multifaceted and each of then could occupy an entire workshop on their own. I want to devote this speech to the immediate consequences for children's development.

The value of unsupervised play: physical and emotional.

The question is, "Does it matter that children's free play is being curtailed and replaced by adult organised activities?" Yes.

That's not to say that all adult supervision and direction is not of benefit to children. For example, physical education lessons allow the teaching of new skills and demand their practice. Children don't automatically develop the skills necessary to successfully participate in sport: running, jumping, throwing and catching need to be shown and then practised.

Adults sometimes do need to push children to work hard at developing, whether physically or emotionally. (Having spent many hours observing how physiotherapists work, I now understand how brutal adults sometimes need to be, to ensure that children do what's good for them)

Outdoor or Adventure Education has the space to take things further than school based PE Different activities or environments often increase the challenge to children. Being away from home, often in an alien environment, can act as a great leveller for children that are perhaps not so competent at more "everyday" activities- these can range from self care skills to power to weight ratio rather than "strength".

Sharing a common experience, engenders a sense of camaraderie that supports participants to try things that they wouldn't venture on their own- this is often known as peer pressure and considered another "danger". (Initiation to the invigorating fresh water of Scotland while kayaking or gorge walking, is a shared experience that I regularly provide for children). Leaders can also structure activities that move children out of their "comfort zone" and into an "adventure zone" where they have to overcome fears and develop new competencies that shift boundaries for them. The model shows increasing competency, whereby, what was an "adventure" becomes comfortable and what was "panic" becomes "adventure".

"Safety" in the guise of the pressure of "Risk Assessment" is massively reducing the outdoor experience that children get now compared with the past. Health and Safety Officers are generally the key individuals in this process, where the impetus is to avoid being sued rather than to ensure children experience the benefits of the activity. (See, Simon Knight, "The Safe Outdoors", www.spiked-online.com)

This said, there are aspects of play that are essential to child development that can only occur when children are on there own, without adult's around- even Play Workers!

Going "out to play" when the bell rings at school for example, shifts the balance of power somewhat. Activity becomes self generated. Children are very clear about what is play and what is a lesson, and they see the two as very different. Physical education as a subject is assessed and grades are awarded for co-operation and attentiveness, i.e. doing what you are told and not talking. Play, during breaks in teaching, is under the control of the participants themselves, as adult supervision is less intrusive (although this is rapidly changing, see debate on Recess in America).

"When we don't have recess, I feel like screaming. When we do have recess, I do scream!" US Girl.

Research has shown the benefits of regular short breaks in the school day. Sitting for prolonged a time causes a build up of surplus energy. This needs to be released to allow for further concentration. In surveys of school children, results showed that, the longer children were confined, the greater was their need for activity.

When in control of their play activities children also will try to generate excitement. Easy activities are modified to make them more difficult and so produce uncertain outcomes. This keeps children interested and challenged. And they therefore develop better physical skills to cope. In Norway (the ground breaking playground at Skudeneshavn primary in Karmoy. See article by S. Knight, "Welcome to the Danger Zone", www.GenerationYouthIssues.org. Reprinted from The Scotsman.), once rope swings were mastered, children would next try to overload them, to the point where they would all fall off. Better players at particular sports would also handicap themselves to make games more exciting (e.g. table tennis). The Norwegian philosophy sees learning as a series of "building blocks", where everything attempted is safely routed in something that has already been achieved.

As adults modelling tomorrow's adults, we should be able to stress that life does and should contain risks. We should know when to intervene in children's lives and when not to interfere, without fear of litigation.

Children need time and space away from adults for emotional development too. Developing independence is an essential component of growing up. Exploring, experimenting, taking decisions and making mistakes not just physically but also in the realm of peer relations, all contribute to developing maturity. Peer relations act as a practice arena for young people where they can rehearse interpersonal relations prior to taking full adult responsibility.

James Youniss pulls this apart very well in his, "Parents and Peers in Social Development",

"...peer relations are the source from which critical characteristics of the mature personality come. These include a sense of equality, interpersonal sensitivity, the need for intimacy, and mutual understanding.",

Youniss, 1980, "Parents and Peers in Social Development", Chicago.

Youniss isn't one sided in this, in fact he stresses that without adult input, "...there is no possibility for learning culturally established patterns of co-operation and mutual concern.". What he does say is that certain learning opportunities only occur in peer relations and cannot happen anywhere else.

Children need 'private space'. The idea that playtime and playgrounds are dangerous and problematic needs to be challenged. Research carried out by the Institute of Education has shown that for children school break time is a,

"...significant and generally enjoyable time (and that) the great majority of pupils throughout their school careers expressed a positive view of break time."

Blatchford, 1998, "The state of play in schools", in Woodhead, Faulkner and Littleton (Ed), "Making Sense of Social Development", Routledge/ O.U.

The school playground is a place where many experimental social interactions are tried out. Life in the playground can help in the development of many social skills that are essential in later life. Even when in conflict, a normal experience for children and particularly so between close friends, important strategies for the management of difficulties are acquired. (There was a debate on day one of this conference about leaving children to resolve differences, even when fighting. While opposing omnipresent adults, we should still feel a duty to intervene to prevent serious injuries.) If denied the opportunity to experience real mistakes, with real consequences, children miss out on the important role of error in learning. Margaret Donaldson, the Edinburgh child psychologist, in her book, "Children's Minds" (1987, Fontana Press), points out the fundamental urge of children to be independent, to manage by themselves. Not allowing children the freedom to make mistakes deprives them of the freedom to flourish. We should ask ourselves whether intervention, even helpful intervention is necessarily a good thing.

When their peer relations are controlled by adults they cease to be peer relations. Children are prevented from acting as social agents themselves. Anti-bullying programmes are a great example of adult led intervention. (Since 1980, bullying has emerged as a key concern of parents and teachers. The explosion of literature on the subject since that time indicates that this concern hasn't always been around.)

Youniss quotes Piaget and Sullivan at length to illustrate the difference between adult/child and child/child relationships,

"In all spheres, two types of relations must be distinguished: constraint and co-operation. The first implies an element of unilateral respect, of authority and prestige; the second is simply the intercourse between individuals on an equal footing." Piaget.

"If you will look closely at one of your children when he finally finds a chum.......you will discover something very different in the relationship, namely, that your child begins to develop a real sensitivity of what matters to another person.......not....."what should I do to get what I want" but instead "what should I do to contribute to the happiness or to support the prestige and feelings of worthwhileness of my chum." Sullivan.

Anti-bullying programmes remove the experience of unfettered conflict and kindness. Children may well act in a more civilised fashion towards one another but 'acting' is precisely what they are doing. If children only give through a sense of duty then they are not really giving. There can be no mutuality while an adult is standing on guard.

Storing up problems for the future.

It's not very productive to counter panics by just replacing one worry with another. There are however, some real and potentially problematic consequences for society if we deny children the space and time they require.

The skills, competency and independence that currently define adulthood will become meaningless if young people never practice them. If everyday life for them is constantly controlled and regulated, they will grow up expecting regulation and so depend on third parties to resolve their difficulties. The concept of independence will lose its reality.

Without independence there is no responsibility. Looking to blame others for our own misfortunes is an already well established fact of modern day society. Sometimes accidents do occur and we do contribute to our own woes. The blame game diminishes our own sense of self.

Litigation breads mistrust. Teachers, play leaders, outdoor activities instructors and local authority parks and recreation sections are all scared. Everything they do with children is double thought and defensive. Children pick up on this vulnerability and exploit it. But worse still they internalise it and learn not to trust. Compensation culture promotes suspicion and conflict and directly undermines relations of trust and a sense of personal responsibility. For a reasoned discussion on this see, E.Lee (Editor), 2002, 'Compensation Crazy: do we blame and claim too much?', Hodder and Stoughton.

Ending the Fear Game. Facts V's emotion.

How do we counter the drive for safety?

While parents are so preoccupied with child safety, it is pointless to just increase the number of "child friendly" or "safe play" areas. This will just contribute to the growing uneasiness about the world outside of home. To "make places safe" is to accept that they were unsafe before and to discredits providers who insisted the opposite.

In the current climate, bombarding parents with the "true" facts, and contextualising the real risks, has a similar outcome. Furedi recognises this,

"...when it comes to public debate, the power of emotion triumphs over the cold facts."

Furedi, March 2002, "Epidemic of Fear", www.spiked-online.com

Challenging the false perception that children are more vulnerable today requires that people like ourselves are much more critical when risks facing children are inflated. In particular the notion of "stranger danger" needs to be turned on its head. Children need to be encouraged to see unknown adults as potential allies. The more adults children meet, the greater will their worldliness be and consequently their powers to discern a sinister character.

The most useful thing that we and other youth and play workers and educationalists can do, is to get together with parents and other members of the community and initiate as discussion about how we can provide children with greater freedom to roam together with more challenging play environments. Central to this is getting agreement about allowing and expecting adults to take responsibility for other people's children. This will generate a greater sense of community by breaking down barriers between adults and also between the generations, resolving many tensions in the process.

Opening up a debate about the culture of litigation is important also. Everybody needs to come to recognise that unfortunately accidents do sometimes happen and that no one is to blame. Exciting and challenging experiences necessarily involve an element of danger. Not only do these activities contribute to the all rounded development of individuals, they also provided experiences that allow children to learn how to minimise the risk of injury.

"...risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing,
the person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
They may avoid suffering and sorrow,
but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love or live.
Chained by their certainties they are slaves,
they have forfeited their freedom.
Only a person who risks is free."

unknown author

quoted in, Peter Barnes, 1997, "Theory Into Practice", Scottish School of Sport Studies.