Learning the ropes: why Germany is building risk into its playgrounds

[Jilly_in_VA]

Towering over a woodland playground on the northernmost outskirts of Berlin, the Triitopia climbing frame is the kind to cause worry in any anxious parent.

Children aged six and upwards wind their way through four stacked steel-wire buckyballs and scramble up dangling rope ladders until they reach a platform about 10 metres above the forest floor. Parents can try to keep up with their young mountaineers as they ascend through the rope spiderweb, but they might get left behind in the tightly woven mesh.

If scaling the Triitopia looks risky, that is the point: built in 2018, the climbing tower in Berlin-Frohnau’s Ludwig Lesser Park is emblematic of a trend that has accelerated in Germany over the last five years. Playgrounds, a growing number of educators, manufacturers and town planners argue, must stop striving for absolute safety and instead create challenging microcosms that teach children to navigate difficult situations even if the consequence is the odd broken bone.

“Playgrounds are islands of free movement in a dangerous motorised environment,” says Prof Rolf Schwarz of Karlsruhe University of Education, who advises councils and playground designers. “If we want children to be prepared for risk, we need to allow them to come into contact with risk.”

Even insurance companies agree. One influential 2004 study found that children who had improved their motor skills in playgrounds at an early age were less likely to suffer accidents as they got older. With young people spending an increasing amount of time in their own home, the umbrella association of statutory accident insurers in Germany last year called for more playgrounds that teach children to develop “risk competence”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/24/why-germany-is-building-risk-into-its-playgrounds

[Kali]

1. when I was a kid

there was asphalt under the equipment, and it was all made of steel. when my kids were small one got into trouble for "climbing on the playground equipment" - he was scaling the pole that supported the plastic slide.

[GoCubsGo]

6. Well, having suffered from first- and second-degree burns on metal slide,

I am happy that they switched to plastic. Holy hell, those things got hot in the summer! Some of them could blind you, too. The metal they were made of was mirror-like.

[Kali]

7. oh yeah the reflection!

I don't remember getting burned, I think once it was hot out we stayed off the metal until night. but that was the Phx AZ area.

[Johnny2X2X]

2. Climbing trees

I don’t see kids in the US climbing trees anymore. When I was a kid, every tree I saw was an opportunity. Building self confidence through activities like this creates kids who can solve problems for themselves.

[MineralMan]

3. Sounds like the fun things we did when I was a kid.

In the process, we often got injuries, most of them minor ones. Once in a while a kid would break an arm, though.

We climbed tall trees. We climbed up cliffs. We slid down grassy slopes on old car hoods. I can point to some scars.

However, our natural caution helped us avoid serious injuries. We did learn things like balance and evaluation of a physical challenge, though.

None of those things we did that were dangerous were found on playgrounds, though. We used the planet as our playground. i grew up in the 1950s in a small rural town in California surrounded by mountains. That was our playground.

[Jilly_in_VA]

4. My kids and their contemporaries

still had a few opportunities in the 80s. When my daughter was 9 I remember a boy on her soccer team who had a crush on her. His name was Michael and he went to our church, at least on occasion---his parents were divorced. He used to call her up and then get tongue-tied, apparently. Anyway, he was showing off on the monkey bars at his school and managed to fall off and break both wrists. His mother was not particularly upset, nor, apparently, was his dad; both shrugged it off as a "boys will be boys" kind of thing. No helicoptering there. It did ruin his soccer season, though.

[Solly Mack]

5. I used to climb buildings as a child. Fucked my left ankle up but good when I was four.

I was walking a ledge about twenty feet up. The ledge was over the doorway leading into the parish house. I had scaled my way up to the ledge and was walking across it when I fell.

I healed.

Broke my left wrist a year later while turning flips on a large steel pipe that was part of the playground and used for that purpose.

Used to jump from swings too. High, higher, highest - then jump.

Wheee!

It was fun.

[Martin Eden]

8. Steel monkey bars with asphalt below

Basically just a cubic framework, we never considered it dangerous and I don't recall anyone getting hurt.

Of course, I also climbed on just about anything that wasn't playground equipment.

[JanMichael]

9. You can build challenge into activities safely which is what I imagine they are doing

This isn't like the hot metal slide over the cement platform with pieces of glass below from beer bottles being broken all weekend. Or the concussion and broken jaw seesaw. Or the cat shit box called a sand box. Brilliant.

The bag of glass needed to go.

This isn't lawn darts...

I'm glad to see them doing this. That said we don't need to go back to the Subaru Brat that had seats in the bed facing the other way as the driver.





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[displacedtexan]

10. City Museum in St Louis is chock full of helicopter parent hell. Kids love it!

If you're not familiar with it, take a look: https://www.citymuseum.org/