Kids These Days

When I was little my Nan had one of those 4-in-1 play sets: a slippery dip to the far left, then a seesaw, a swing, and a horizontal bar with rings attached to either side of it. I can remember being not much older than 5 years old and swinging on those metal rings, or, rather, hanging upside down from the metal pole that made up the frame of the play equipment. I’d pull myself up using the rings, do a turn in the air and dangle my legs over the pole. As I hung there, I’d muster the bravery to take my hands away from the pole and raise them over my head, letting my body hang loose. The only thing stopping me from falling was my legs, which were holding on as if my life depended on it. Once I realised that I could swing, I raced inside to get my Nan’s attention. “Nanny look,” I’d say, “come watch this!” Eager to show off my new trick, I hung upside down again. “Oh, Cameron” she begged, “please be careful!”

Fifteen years on, I now live near a child care centre and pass it nearly every day. The beige coloured brick exterior is all that is visible from the outside, but it is what is within the boundaries of the centre that is truly remarkable. The approach from Explore and Develop is seemingly one that goes against the current of modern-day child care centres because here, they are encouraging the kids to take risks during play.

Although the attitude of most parents in modern-day society is to wrap their kids up in bubble wrap to try and protect them from the cruel realities of the outside world, the child care centre I visited has a different approach, evident by allowing kids to climb trees, allowing kids to participate in campfire activities or to feed chickens. No activity is completely risk-free, but there are precautions in place to attempt to make every activity as safe as possible.

Meeting with Sari, the director of the Explore and Develop child care centre, she shows me around the facilities. When I first walk in the doors, Ed Sheeran is played softly in the background as it blends with the screams and laughter of children playing out the back. I get a glance into one of the rooms where the children learn. Sitting on a shelf are five timber blocks with numbers written on them with black paint. Reading from left to right it reads “3, 4, 6, 7, 8”. The number 5 is missing, and oddly I am concerned with this small detail. Moving through the room, Sari then shows me outside to where the majority of the kids are playing, and she shows me Dinotopia. This area is where children can explore and climb trees under supervision surrounded by dinosaurs carved of wood.

In the opposite corner, I see a small area fenced off. On closer examination, it is apparent that it is a chicken coop. Four chickens run amuck in this area of the child centre, and the kids love it. One kid excitedly screams “chickens!”, as another boy walks into the coop full of confidence, and without hesitation extends his arm inviting the chicken to eat from his hand. From behind, I hear a kid running and screaming. Sari turns to him and asks, “what’s wrong?” “A monster is chasing us!” he replies. Child imagination is running wild all around me.

Although a one-off experience for me, some get to work with these children in these scenarios daily. Speaking with child care worker Keeley Whymark, she tells me about her day to day life. “Typically, the mornings of an educator start with the drop offs as early as 7am. The children arrive and it’s a struggle with the handover. We try to make it quick so the children don’t become upset.” She continues by explaining to me the breakfast routine before telling me how the children interact and play. “A morning group time occurs to introduce all the children to one another making them feel safe and comfortable in their environment. The children then go outside, depending on the weather, where outside educators set up activities. Usually, these groups are language groups or art and craft activities which aim to develop cognitive skills. Then they free play until lunch. The educators sit and serve the children their lunch around 11:30am, making sure to cater for any allergies or requests from families”. Keeley also explains to me the amount of work and nappy changes they do throughout the day. A lot of hard work but Keeley assured me it is rewarding.

As I turn around I see a hand-crafted board with the following words written in chalk — “WE MUST TEACH OUR CHILDREN: To smell the earth, to taste the rain, to touch the wind, to see things grow, to hear the sun rise and night fall, to care”.

Those words ring true according to child psychologist, Dr John Irvine. He expressed to me the importance of allowing kids to play and engage with their outside environment. “Compare what a child’s upbringing is now compared to your upbringing, I bet you were engaged in more sort of informal play, exploration, all that sort of stuff that today’s kids aren’t exposed to. Play is not a four-letter word, play is one of the most important ingredients in children’s nutrition — their mental nutrition. It’s proven with social development and intellectual things, the problem-solving. And because we’re scared that kids might get hurt if they play, parents think we’ve got to be pretty precious about them”.

As such, there are steps child care centres must take to ensure the children are relatively safe. Every educator must complete a risk assessment for each activity they set up. For example, this is a risk-assessment form completed for Dinotopia.

Other categories that must be considered include risk analysis, information and research, relevant local factors, options and their costs, pros and cons, precedents or comparisons, and consultation, before eventually getting to the benefit-risk judgement, the implementation plan and a plan for monitoring and reviewing the activity.

As I continue to walk around the child care centre, we come across a little girl crying furiously. She’s sitting on the ground and is slouched over as if her body has accepted defeat. Sari tends to the little girl and discovers the reason for her crying — she spilt some of her water bottle on the wooden floor she sits on. In the child’s mind, this is one of the worst things that could happen to her. Despite her cries, she is in fact relatively carefree. So that begs the question, why shelter our children when their hardest troubles in life is spilling their princess pink water bottle?

Dr John Irvine argues that sheltering our children doesn’t allow them to develop crucial skills such as confidence and resilience that come with being able to purely explore their environment and learn from natural play. He continues by saying, “we know that play keeps kids fit, socially and physically, but I’ve seen a report recently saying that today’s generation may grow up to live a shorter lifespan than their parents did because they aren’t as fit. There’s more obesity, more type 2 diabetes, and that comes down to lifestyle. A lot is also related to them not getting out and playing because we’re too scared that something’s going to happen. Kids are too precious for their own good at the moment”.

Evidently, risk during play seems crucial to child psychology and the development of children. However, for educators, it would be a lot easier for them to encourage kids to play safely. The same can be said for the child care centres themselves to avoid the risk of a lawsuit. It makes sense that no one would want that responsibility, however, Explore and Develop seem to care about doing what’s right for the children. With that thought deep in my mind, I continue to look around the centre. It’s quite chaotic with kids running, jumping, playing and screaming, but they are having fun. Although the element of risk is apparent, the children are relatively carefree in their play. The educators also have similar feelings, when speaking to Keeley, she tells me her methods when approaching risky play. “Each activity I set up I do a risk report to monitor it and determine how safe I can make it, but I also allow the children to get away with a lot because I personally believe that to learn anything you need to make mistakes”. I then ask, “what is the worst injury you’ve encountered in child care?” “I’ve never had a bad injury but at my centre, we have had broken bones and those sort of things”. “How do you react when a kid hurts themselves, what’s the procedure?” “I don’t stress when a child hurts themselves but that all depends on the educator. It also depends on how bad the injury is”.

With educators and child care centres introducing the initiative to allow kids to take risks, it seems to bode well for the future of our children. But I couldn’t help but think, ‘how do the parents react to the news that their kids are climbing trees or running along balance beams?’, so, I asked Sari. “They love it”, she tells me. “A lot of families specifically chose us because they’re all about the outdoors, and they want their children to explore”. Gazing into the clouds in the sky she continues, “we also let our kids play in the rain. We’ve had a lot of mud play and the kids have a ball. We let the parents know in advance so they can bring a change of clothes and they’re totally on board. Some even bring their two-year old’s with dirt-proof onesies”. We have a good chuckle and continue the tour.

Sari opens the gate that leads into the children under two area and she brings to my attention a garden sporadic with herbs. “So, in this garden, we have rosemary, mint, chives and strawberries. The kids plant these themselves and they water them and look after them. The kids love the rosemary because of the smell”.

I look back at the memory of myself playing on my nan’s play equipment and I can’t help but think about how different things are today. I used to kick my footy on the road every afternoon after school, and if I had a friend over the cry of “car!” would alert us to get off the road because there was a car coming. Now, along that same street, I don’t see any kids kicking a footy or riding their scooter down the street the same way I used to. I always hear parents say things like “when I was a kid we didn’t have iPad’s and we turned out just fine”, but they’d say it accusingly without a hint of sarcasm. Sari also mentioned why Explore and Develop don’t use iPads. She found that when kids go to school they are all using iPad’s and smart boards, so she doesn’t want to overexpose them to that. She also believes that natural play should be a big part of a child’s life, so her centre encourages outside play, although she acknowledges that comes with a risk. But as she explains, “we believe that anything that can be a risk can also be a benefit. Our goal is to manage risk, not to eliminate it”.

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