Hey kids, toughen up
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Germany is building risk into its playgrounds
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”.
And while you're at it, let them play in and potentially eat dirt!
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I think it is probably a good idea to have play areas like this one.
