(2015-09-14) Hendrickson Why You Should Give Your2yearold A Hammer

Brandon Hendrickson: Why you should give your 2-year-old a hammer — Schools for Humans. Yesterday, we went to an ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND! I first ran across the notion of an "adventure playground" in architect Christopher Alexander's watershed book, A Pattern Language.

our culture glorifies a certain DIY-ness among young children

Alexander goes on: Set up a playground for the children in each neighborhood. Not a highly finished playground, with asphalt and swings, but a place with raw materials of all kinds — nets, boxes, barrels, trees, ropes, simple tools, frames, grass, and water — where children can create and re-create playgrounds of their own.

Adventure playgrounds are rare in the United States: Wikipedia lists just five of them. Delightfully, one is 20 minutes from our apartment — oh, the perks of living around Seattle!

we entered what I can only describe as a magical shantytown: a grove filled with the zany forts and citadels constructed by successive waves of children.

One of the only rules is that while you can add to what others have built, you can't tear anything down

Other than early physics education, why are we so excited about pursuing having adventure playgrounds attached to our schools?

Today, though, I'd like to focus on what might be the most important reason of all: danger. I'll state this plainly: kids need danger.

*obviously, we don't want to plunge our beloved children into profound danger. We don't want them to lose limbs, poke out eyes, or have brain damage.

But I suggest we do want them to scrape their knuckles, bruise their butts, and occasionally thwack their thumbs with hammers.*

Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter had written her master’s dissertation on young teens and their need for sensation and risk; she’d noticed that if they couldn’t feed that desire in some socially acceptable way, some would turn to more-reckless behavior.

She wondered whether a similar dynamic might take hold among younger kids as playgrounds started to become safer and less interesting.

In 2011, Sandseter published her results in a paper called “Children’s Risky Play From an Evolutionary Perspective: The Anti-Phobic Effects of Thrilling Experiences.”

That adventure playgrounds allow children to moderate their own risk seems crucial. If a child is still skittish around heights, they can start by sticking to the ground, and engage heights gradually

In the paper, Sandseter identifies six kinds of risky play:

Exploring heights

Handling dangerous tools

Being near dangerous elements

Rough-and-tumble play —

Speed

Exploring on one’s own.

This last one Sandseter describes as “the most important for the children.” She told me, “When they are left alone and can take full responsibility for their actions, and the consequences of their decisions, it’s a thrilling experience.”

we're making schools for humans means a lot of things, but foremost among them is that we're redesigning schools to match with the obvious facts about what students are. And so we want to bring adventure playgrounds into the school experience

Risk can lead to well-being. Danger can lead to flourishing.