Make confident choices while supervising children at play. Photo / 123rf
Going up the slide is okay, actually. (Sometimes.)
On a recent afternoon at our neighbourhood playground, three scenes unfolded simultaneously: At the slide, a group of 4-year-olds were launching Hot Wheels cars up the metal ramp, sending them soaring through the air like a Fast & Furious scene in miniature (Fun! Creative! Definitely unsafe!). By the swing set, my 6-year-old was twirling a swing so the ropes tightly coiled, then watching as it spun back to its natural state - while another kid waited for a turn to actually, you know, swing. On nearby climbing equipment, a little boy called out for his parent; he wanted help to reach the fireman’s pole.
A playground is a place where kids figure things out, which means parents have to figure things out, too. Do we spring into action if someone’s about to get hurt? We do. Do we insist that swings are only for swinging? We do not. But do we insist that our kids share the swings? Yes.
Often, though, the answers can feel murkier - especially in a communal, sometimes chaotic space where kids of all ages are meant to play, explore and build a sense of independence.
So how should parents conduct themselves and guide their kids? A playground designer, a prominent parenting expert and a mum weighed in on a few common - and potentially tense - scenarios.
What to do: Have a chat with your kid about the toy in question, and what it means to bring it to a communal play environment. “My rule for my boys is: If you bring something to the playground, you’re going to share it. If you don’t want it to get lost or broken by another child, then it shouldn’t come to the playground,” says Victoria Thevenot, a mum of two. If another child is playing with one of her sons’ toys, she says, she’ll wait until her family is leaving the playground to ask for it back.
Alternatively: Janet Lansbury, parenting expert, educator and author, is in favour of leaving toys at home. “I think toys are overrated,” she says. “Doing more with less, just being outdoors with whatever is there and other kids - that’s great.”
What to do: If you showed up with a toddler, you’ll go wherever they go, so prepare to get your 10,000 steps. But if your children are older preschoolers or elementary-age kids, they’re probably ready for more independence and autonomy - so Lansbury suggests that you find a place to park yourself and plan to (mostly) stay put.
Lansbury refers to this as being a “secure base” (a nod to attachment theory), which applies rather literally to a playground setting: Parents should camp out in one spot, she says, while giving their children room to explore and do their own thing.
“If we’re moving around, parents sometimes don’t realise that your child feels less secure because they don’t know where you are at times,” she says. “You want to stay observant, especially if your child is new to a place ... but that doesn’t mean we have to be glued to them constantly.”
What to do: Highly relatable, but stay attuned to what your kids are up to. Thevenot remembers a parent who would show up to the neighbourhood playground, open a book and rarely glance up - so she never noticed that her kid was sometimes playing too roughly with others.
“Even if I don’t need to pay 100% attention, I don’t want to be in another world at the playground,” Thevenot says. “You can’t be that checked out.”
Lansbury agrees - and beyond the need to stay observant for our kids’ sake, it’s probably not bad for parents to take a screen break, anyway: “That boundary is good for us too.”
What to do: Intercept the child, and locate their parents.
There are plenty of grey areas when it comes to intervening with a child who isn’t yours - but this isn’t one of them, says Thevenot, who has found herself in this situation before. “I think this is one area where it is 100% okay for another parent to step in,” she says. “If I’m near the gates of the playground, and I see a kid wandering off, I will say ‘Oh, I don’t think you’re supposed to be leaving right now,’ and ‘let’s find your parent’.”
What to do: Try to avoid the near-universal parental instinct to reflexively bark some variation of “We only go down the slide!”
As a parent of two young boys and the founder of play design studio Mischief & Wilde, Nathan Schleicher has spent countless hours at playgrounds - and he’s noticed that the slide often receives the most fervent parental monitoring. But there’s nuance here, he argues. Safety is paramount, and sharing is important, “so if another kid is coming down the slide, or waiting to take a turn with the slide, then don’t climb up,” he says.
But otherwise? Let your kid go for it. “I think parents tend to impose lots of rules on their children around how they play, and that’s such a bummer,” he says. “I personally love running up a slide, and highly recommend it.”
What to do: Get involved, right away. Lansbury sometimes hears from parents who hesitate in situations like this - another child is hurting their child, and the parent doesn’t immediately intervene because they’re waiting for their child to stick up for themselves. “And I’m like: No, no, no! You get right in there,” she says.
To be clear, she is not saying to go full-primal-Mama Bear; quite the opposite. If one child is trying to hit - or even hug - another who doesn’t want that touch, Lansbury suggests that a parent approach calmly, physically prevent the unwanted contact from happening, and explain why you are doing so. “You want to do that as early as possible - but walking in casually, not running in. You might say, ‘Oh, I’ve got to stop you, I don’t know if she wants that.’ Or ‘Maybe he doesn’t want you to hug him like that.’” The key, she says, whether you’re addressing your child or another, is to do so in a neutral, non-judgmental tone. “You’re not coming down on anybody,” she says. “Everyone is where they are, in terms of their own points of development.”
What to do: This can be tricky. Some squabbling and conflict on the playground is natural; kids sometimes address each other bluntly (to adults, it might sound rude, even when a child is really just stating a matter-of-fact preference), and there is value in letting children learn how to navigate social circumstances themselves.
But if a child says something hurtful, or is refusing to share space or playground equipment, it’s important for a parent to offer guidance.
“As a parent, I want my children to be really inclusive and kind, and so there are times when I’ve stepped in and just pulled them aside and said ‘Hey, this is what I saw.’ And then they can explain themselves a little bit,” Schleicher says. But he’s also aware that an adult’s intervention can turn something minor into a bigger deal. “I think there are also times where it’s important to let children navigate those situations themselves, and you might be surprised by how fast they can resolve conflict.”
If you do need to address a behaviour with your child, Lansbury says, it’s better to be discrete rather than shout across the playground: “I would definitely give them the respect of not announcing it to the world,” she says. “Pull them aside, and say, ‘You know what, I had to stop you, because I think [what you’re doing/what you said] is really hurting their feelings.”
What to do: Have fun, but be mindful to share the space.
In Thevenot’s neighbourhood, where many families live in apartments, birthday parties are frequently held at the playground. Once she recalls, guests wound up taking over a track where children ride their bikes and scooters. The situation became uncomfortable when a party-going grandmother scolded the kids who were zipping past.
“The playground is not all yours,” Thevenot says. “You have to remember that it’s a public, communal space for all kids.”
That respect goes in both directions, she adds - if her children try to approach a birthday party that they weren’t invited to, “I’ll tell them, ‘we do not know those people, we can’t go have a piece of cake, but let’s go play somewhere else.’”
What to do: Take a deep breath and remember: If your kid sees that you’re scared, they’ll get scared, which might actually make them less safe. And: If they were able to get themselves up there, they should be able to get back down.
Schleicher has seen how an exciting accomplishment can be quickly unravelled by frightened parents: He once watched a 5-year-old climb a 3m climbing installation at a playground, and the child’s parents were “really, really nervous”, he says. “The parents said ‘you need to come down’ and ‘you’ve got to be careful’ and it started to really freak out the kid who, moments ago, was really happy and had achieved something that they were quite proud of,” he says. Their approach backfired: The child was so rattled that he felt scared to come down.
Try to trust in your child’s ability - and if the distance between your child and the ground is making you feel woozy, “just go near them, calmly, and spot them”, Lansbury says. “Chilled-out spotting is your answer.”
What to do: Don’t do it, and explain why: Just as we need to trust a child’s ability when they can climb by themselves, Schleicher says, we also need to trust their body’s limits when they can’t.
“When my kids ask for me to help them climb because they can’t reach something, I don’t help them get up to a place, ever,” he says. “If they’re not capable of getting to the space on their own, then they’re definitely not able to get down safely.”
In those instances, Schleicher explains to his kids that they might need to grow or practice before they can attain a physical feat themselves; they can come back another day - and try again.
“And that becomes a challenge, and they do want to keep coming back,” he says. “As parents, we tend to manage our children’s difficulties for them, and playgrounds are just a great space to not do that - to step back, to let them figure out how to manage their challenges on their own.”
People are often much harder on themselves than others.