I was sweating profusely. It was a scorching day and I’d just picked my way across a wasteland strewn with glass and empty beer cans. I’d sidestepped an enormous, lifeless rat, its brown fur bleached blonde by the sun. Now I found myself in a dense woodland offering merciful shade.
But I was not alone. There were others here that would do me harm. I moved through the wood with practiced stealth, hesitating as a twig cracked beneath my feet.
I sensed movement behind me and felt a rush of adrenaline as I prepared to run. Resisting it, I crouched down in a bush and watched as a figure skulked out of the trees and picked up the path. He nosied around like a frustrated hound but soon moved off, lacking the patience to sniff me out.
I picked up a different track through the wood until I could see an exit point through a wooden gate. I was almost at the edge of the treeline when I was struck from above. I was knocked from my feet but the shock was worse than the strike. Pinned to the ground, blows rained down on my arms.
I’d endured about thirty seconds of punishment when my neighbour suddenly relented and said, “You’re on our side now.”
Predators, our variation on commando or armies, seemed like an entirely normal, healthy means of entertaining ourselves. It got us out of the house, we were interacting with other kids, we were using our imagination, we were acting, we were exploring our environment and most importantly of all, we were free for the first time in our lives.
Now I can accept that dodging dead rats and broken glass bottles whilst crossing old railway lines brings with legitimate hygiene concerns and recreating fight scenes from a movie or TV show might not be every parent’s idea of how they want their child to develop yet I look back on some of that adventure reenactment play as some of the happiest moments of my childhood.
Because it was just play. Yes, the punches in the arms hurt a bit, but I knew I wasn’t in any real trouble. The perpetrator was still my friend.
Can we nurture our kids’ imaginations and allow them this sense of freedom? There seems to be a sanitisation of play,an americanised shift from play to practice.Thirty years ago we knocked on each other’s doors and organised our own games, football, cricket, tennis, blocky whatever it happened to be.
Now, parents drop kids off at an organised session and then pick them up afterwards or they stay keeping one eye on their phone and one on their child. Sessions invariably have a cost behind them, which is accepted by most parents. This adds to the structure and the notion that somehow ‘practice’ is a better quality of play.
Now, if I seem to be putting down organised practice, I don’t mean to. All practice, whether it be of football, trampolining, dance, drama etc, can develop skills and breed confidence. It can stimulate creativity and imagination. Children cultivate friendships through shared experience and I wish more choice had been available to me when I was younger.
But there is something about that sense of freedom you get when you first ride a bike or climb a tree. Kids recognise there is a risk attached but most kids assess risk reasonably and show a natural resilience when mishaps occur. Many parents, understandably perhaps, assess risks differently these days and prefer the structured safe play where children can be dropped off and picked up. To me this misses those two vital components of play, imagination and freedom.
Ideally, you’d think a marriage of structured and unstructured play would work best. However, that is a difficult balance to find in a world of digital distraction and given the safeguarding health and safety society we now live in, it’s understandable why parents unwittingly prevent this kind of experiential, developmental play.
Many parents will do outdoorsy adventurous stuff with their kids because they want to spend time with them, sharing valuable experiences that may have been passed on from their own parents. It is only natural that they want to pass on these skills in a safe and controlled way to their children.
However, most of us know from our own experience that safeguarding has gone too far and we don’t want kids growing up without experiencing some of the play that impacted on our lives. Whether it’s exploring rock pools, building sandcastles or shelters or swinging on a rope swing or jumping into rivers. We can trust ourselves to make the right judgements.
The tricky part for 21st Century parents is not just making those judgements but also allowing children to decide for for themselves what kind of risk they want to take. There are real dangers in allowing children more freedom but there are also real rewards in terms of confidence and independence. Can we let children discover their own adventures? It’s a tough call.
