(upbeat music) - Hello everyone. Today I'll be chatting with Dr. Mariana Brusoni. Mariana is a professor at the University of British Columbia, director of the Human Early Learning Partnership, an investigator at the British Columbia Children's Hospital Research Institute. She studies how to bring risky play back into children's lives and you can find her research and resources over at outsideplay.work. In today's episode, we talk about the differentiation between risky and dangerous play, the developmental benefits of risky play, how to find the balance between risk and safety, how to expose your children to risky play, and much more. Let's dive in. Just a little disclaimer before we start this episode, this podcast does not provide medical advice. With information on this podcast is for informational purposes only. No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. One more note before we start. If you are feeling overwhelmed by the constant scroll on social media and want a place where you can consume curated motherhood content at your own pace, join us over at Badass Matriarch on Substack, a place where you can slow down, connect, and get the inspiration you need without the wasted time. Link is in the show notes. See you there. - Hello everybody. Today we have Dr. Marianna Bruce-Soney. Welcome to the podcast. - Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here. - So I originally found your name when I was reading The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. And this was, I don't know, a couple months ago. And I saw your name and I saw what you do. And I just found it to be incredibly fascinating. And I was super excited when you had agreed to talk with me when I reached out. So thank you so much for taking time. I'm sure busy schedule to talk about this. Because, you know, it's funny. Once you have kids things, I don't know. I think you're so set on keeping this little thing alive and things are really stressful when you have that first baby. And you don't think of all the things. And I certainly never thought about risky play or saying like be careful all the time to my child when I just had one and when they were just born. Like I didn't think about those things. But it's funny, when I was a child, I look back and certainly after reading this book, looked back and I was like, wow. I was just exposed to so much risky play. I mean, my parents and I give kudos to my parents. I was an only child. So to let that only child kind of just like push the limits all the time, I can't imagine how kind of scary that was or maybe it was, I don't know. But for them to just let that happen. And I got hurt all the time. I was constantly doing silly things. And I think then to my parenting and there's definitely room for improvement. And I do think it's definitely more of like the societal change where parents just don't parent similarly to what they were in the '80s. It's just not the same. And I think my parents were both very busy with work. And so there was always someone home, but they were cooking, cleaning and doing all the things. And I was just in the neighborhood playing with all the neighborhood kids, with all different ages, right? And so being exposed to all these different things because of the different age ranges. And it's just, it's so, so important for kids. So I would love for you to just kind of start off today by just defining what risky play is and how that might differ from what someone might consider more dangerous play. - Yeah, sure, happy to do so. So we have kind of an definition of risky play, which we consider thrilling and exciting forms of play where kids are engaged with uncertainty and there's a chance of physical injury. And so I just wanna kind of break that down for you 'cause there's important elements there. So the thrilling excitement comes from kids pushing themselves past what they're used to, right? So it could be like climbing a bit higher or jumping a bit farther or whatever. And it gives them that kind of tickles in their tummy, kind of laying, you know, it's the edge of fear, but not quite into full blown care. And then the engaging with uncertainty is also very important 'cause they don't know what's gonna happen, could be good, could be bad. And that's part of the whole aspect of the thrill and the excitement. And it's also really important training to be able to deal with what essentially is a constantly uncertain world, you know? So it's an opportunity for kids to have these experiences of experimenting and not knowing how it's gonna turn out and build on those skills. The chance of physical injury, that's the part that I've been doing quite a bit of work on because that's what's been one of the huge barriers to this. The perception that it's so dangerous and that kids shouldn't be allowed to do it because they'll get hurt. And so with my own background as a developmental psychologist and an injury prevention researcher, I've been able to dig into, okay, well, how likely is it they'll get hurt and how bad could those injuries be? And essentially, you know, anytime you move your body, you're increasing the likelihood of injury. And if you look at the injury statistics, you're much more likely when you look at kind of the amount of time kids spend doing stuff and you control for that, you're more likely to get injured in sports than you are in play. And yet nobody's like kind of in and out for saying that kids shouldn't do sports, right? So that, and then when we think about kinds of risky play, I think if people think back to their favorite play memories, kind of as you did at the beginning, I'm sure all of us can think of these things. But it's like, you know, climbing trees, maybe racing your bike down a hill, rough and tumble play, wandering the neighborhood without an adult kind of watching over you, whittling a stick or building a fort or, you know, those kinds of things are what we consider parts of risky play. And I think the kind of final really important element here is that what risky play looks like for one kid versus another will be very different. And so it's not like, okay, well, every say four year old should, this is what risky play looks like for them. Because kids have very different interests and abilities and maybe one child is really good at climbing and has lots of experience and can go much higher than another child and needs that higher level to feel the risk. You know, so it's, there's a lot of kind of subjectivity and we want to make sure that kids have the opportunity to figure this out, to experiment for themselves and to really know themselves around what they're comfortable with. - Yeah, I mean, you know, it's so interesting because parents, I think, really need to hear things like what you were saying about, you know, kids being more injured during sports than they are in play. And I think about my four kids. And so my kids range from age right now, 10 to four. And that's four kids, they play sports, they play outside. We do a lot of like things with them outside now. They have a lot of unstructured play out there. And we've only had two injuries. And mind you, you know, I mean, it might depend on where you live, things like that. But two injuries and both of which occurred, not even during play, you know? And one of them was like, you know, she went up on the stool when she was three to wash her hands and she kind of like slid off the side of it and broke her arm. You know, so it's these things where like you said, everyday risk of you just moving your body and getting up to go to the kitchen like you don't know. I mean, you could slip and fall, right? And hurt yourself and get a broken arm or something. And so as a parent though, I do feel like it can be very, very hard depending on, you know, obviously your own personality and maybe your own anxiety levels and being comfortable with your kids kind of taking that next step. And so I don't know if you can kind of give us maybe these tips that parents that have a difficult time with this, maybe giving them some tools that they can use to help them kind of take another step back and maybe let their kids kind of explore a little bit more. - Yeah, absolutely. We do lots of work with parents. We've interviewed, I think I've interviewed every parent in the world by now, I feel like I'm gonna get their sense of this. And so based on that, we developed a tool which anybody can find on outsideplay.org, which helps walk parents through kind of some simple, self-reflective questions and thoughts, you know, what's really important to them? What do they want for their child? And how can they build this into their kind of everyday practice? And what we highlight is you wanna start small. You wanna do things that are underwhelming because if you start too big, it can be overwhelmed and then you end up doing nothing, right? And so you build on these kind of small wins. And so, you know, and it's gotta be very personal, right? Based on the parents and how they're in their situation. But one example we give is like, you know, next time. And as you point out, a lot of what we see is parents reacting in fear. And any which is a very strong motivator and it's kind of the fast thinking brain versus taking the time to really think. So what's the likelihood of something really terrible happening? And what is my child getting out of this? And how can my interfering actually, you know, do harm to my child? So one of the things we suggest is, you know, maybe next time you wanna say be careful or watch out or know that you just counted 17. And give your kind of what we call the slow brain time to kind of kick into gear so that you can put the fast brain to rest a bit and that kind of initial fear, visceral fear response to actually really delve into, well, actually look, they seem to be figuring it out on their own and look how they're enjoying themselves. And really the likelihood of something really bad happening is almost non-existent. And, you know, and so with that, even just the little counting to 17 and the little bit of data that you get on your child in that time, that can be a really important win to then be like, build on that for next time. And so that's what we encourage with parents and just, you know, start small and see where it takes you. - Yeah, we kind of did that with our, with our children when it came to giving them just a bigger radius of where they're able to play and, you know, allowing them to be at a certain age to walk down the street to a friend's house, you know? And it's actually been really cool because as our kids have gotten older now, I mean, our four year old just gets to do everything, you know? And I'm sure there's like plenty of studies studying, you know, your first child versus, you know, your third, fourth, fifth child and, you know, how much more risky play they kind of engage in because again, you're like, okay, this is not my first rodeo, I know what to expect and I know how capable my child is. And I'm certain that things like most part of anxiety and things like that play a factor in all of this, certainly. And it can be, it can be very difficult, but doing it in little small increments can be really beneficial. And you might not even notice that it's making a huge difference to your child, you know, in their development over time if you're going with those small increments 'cause I know there's some parents that are like, wait, you what? You know, and we let our oldest walk home from school, we kind of like paved out like a way for her to get home and she does walk with a neighbor friend and, but sometimes when you're talking about that, they're like, wait, what? She walks home from school and I'm like, yeah, kids always used to walk home from school and she walks home from school. But you have to, you know, for like months we walked her to and from school, we made sure she knew the route and we made sure we gave her all the tools that she needed in case something were to happen. You know, what do you do if X, Y, or Z? And she showed us that she was able to respond adequately to those things and then off she goes. But it definitely takes time to get there. Can you go over with us just those benefits developmentally when it comes to kids having access to this unstructured play where they're able to kind of discover their surroundings without an adult kind of watching over them? - Yeah, absolutely. And I think the easiest way for people to get their minds around this is really just to think back to their own favorite childhood play memories, right? And often people talk about, you know, being outside, being with their friends, you know, the sense of limitless time and not having kind of adults watch over them and being able to run and jump and shout and move their bodies in ways that, you know, nobody's saying, you know, don't run or inside voices or, you know, those kinds of things. And so the limitless opportunities of the outdoors is what draws people out there. But if you actually look at kind of developmental needs and then stages, it's remarkable how important these kinds of experiences map onto that. So if you think about even something as simple as, you know, moving your body, so really robust evidence that kids are more physically active outdoors and play than they are when they're indoors, right? So even just that and less sedentary, they're less likely to be on screens. But then you think about, you know, them hanging out with friends and figuring out what they're gonna do and making plans and carrying those plans out. So then you have things like they're building their executive functioning skills, you know, and making plans and they're sustaining attention on a task until it goes through. Those are really, really important skills. They're doing it independently, figuring it out with their friends. So they're building their self-confidence that they can do it and they're learning to negotiate socially with their friends. They're experiencing strong emotions, like in terms of thrill and excitement and I'd love to dig into that further with you in a bit, those are really strong emotions for the body. And so they're developing kind of emotional, social-emotional learning around these strong emotions and how to manage and handle them and how they can be positive things to experience. There's a whole bunch of mental health benefits in terms of building their self-confidence in terms of like, wow, you know, look what I was able to do as well as when things go wrong, that they're like, oh, actually, I can handle it. You know, I'm able to cope when, you know, things don't go according to plan. They build risk management skills in terms of, oh, well, you know, now I know that slippery pavement, I gotta be more careful of it, you know, and that sort of stuff, right? That those are things that you can't learn in a textbook. You can't just be told about them. You have to build your own experiences with them gradually over time and there's no better way than in play so that you build your competencies to do what we, you know, are meant to do, which is ultimately to be an independent adult. - Right. I'm thinking here, and I wonder if you've either maybe in your research kind of come across this or have you seen any research or done anything on your own that has to do with children that were exposed to like a significant amount of, you know, risky play or unstructured outdoor play versus those who were not and kind of how they develop, you know, into those teen years and adulthood and kind of what that looks like as far as what they're capable of and just how they function in the everyday world. Like, have you seen anything on that? - Yeah, well, we're doing some of that ourselves. It's, you know, that kind of longitudinal research is quite expensive to get funded and hard, so they're not that many studies. Some stuff is kind of, you know, looking back, so getting people to report back on what their childhood was like and looking at what they're like. One of the studies that we're doing now actually is, we're looking at the hypothesis that kids who have these experiences actually, it's the risk management skills translate into other kind of everyday life scenarios. So we're using virtual reality because you can't just kind of throw kids into traffic and, you know, see what happens. So we're doing it virtually, throwing them into virtual traffic and see. - That's pretty cool, honestly. - Yeah, so like, you know, do you see a difference in terms of how kids crossroads the kind of decisions that they make, how tentative or daredevil-y, are they, and so on, based on kind of their parents' report and their own reports of the kinds of, you know, risky play experiences that they have had in their lives. And so we're in the midst of that research now and hope to have answers pretty soon. - I think that's absolutely fascinating, right? To just like have that knowledge of what their childhood is like and what they're exposed to and then how they're reacting in those situations is absolutely fascinating. And I mean, great research to present if that, you know, really helps us understand more about risky play and all of that. - What are the common misconceptions that I know you mentioned it briefly in the beginning, but with risky play and injuries in general? Like, what can you tell us about that? - Yeah, well, one of the first ones we tackled was the fact that risk and safety are opposite ends of the same continuum. That's not actually the case. You can have like high risk and risk opportunities while also being really conscious of safety. And that's what we wanna really go for, right? So that we have environments where kids can really, you know, delve into, explore, try things out, make decisions for themselves around the risk they wanna engage in, but that we consider controlling the most serious hazards so that the likelihood of serious injury is low and the likelihood of death is kind of non-existent, right? So that's what we're aiming for. It's not like you can have one or the other. - Yeah, let's touch on just safety as a whole and you can even touch on just safety as in, you know, people being concerned about things like, oh, if my child goes outside, I'm worried they're gonna be abducted or someone's gonna take them more safety in that realm, but also safety as how parents perceive it compared to how we kind of perceived safety, you know, I don't know, back in the '70s and '80s where kids were kind of just out and about and doing whatever, I feel like there's much less of that now. How has the concept of childhood safety kind of evolved over time? And how do you think that's kind of impact in children today versus how children played, you know, I don't know, 40 years ago? - Yeah, it's quite fascinating, actually. - It is, yeah. - There's this common perception that the world is a less safe place than when we were children and you can have any generation and they'll kind of, you know, that's very common. And in fact, when we look at the injury statistics, it's the opposite. Like, it's never been a safer time to be a child than it is right now. And so sometimes people talk about, okay, well then, all the protection is a good thing. We're keeping kids safer. When you look at the injury statistics, so child injury deaths were at their height in the early '70s. And what was killing kids was cars. Basically, kids as passengers in cars, you know, no seat belts, no airbags, no, you know, on and on. It was like, they were really quite unsafe. And as you had more and more cars on the road, you had a greater incidence of kids being killed in cars. And so in the '70s, you started to see the laws around seat belts, you know, drunk driving, you know, those kinds of things that really cut down on child injury deaths. And so fast forward to now, the leading cause of child injury death is still cars, kids in cars as passengers. There's a lot less than in the '70s, but it's still that. And yet, we don't, as parents, hesitate to put our kids in cars and drive them around. And in fact, we see that as a way of keeping them safe, you know, versus letting them, say, walk from here or whatever, right? Not realizing that that's actually the most likely thing. If anything's gonna harm them, it would be that. The other common misconception is around kidnapping. And the perception that there's, you know, that there's a monster kind of lurking everywhere waiting to do something nefarious to our child. And there's, it's hard to get kind of clear kidnapping stats, and I'm speaking here for Canada 'cause I know statistics better here, but the last time we were able to kind of gather national stats, the likelihood of kidnapping by a stranger, you know, that the child does not know was one in 14 million, which is the same likelihood as kind of winning our big national lottery. And yet parents, they kind of blown up this fear because it really is the most awful thing that parents can think of. And we do hear stories of it, so it seems more present than it actually is statistically. But we've blown up this fear and we're doing excessive things to try and avoid the likelihood of that happening without considering the consequences of our actions in limiting our children's lives to such an extent that they don't have the freedom that they used to, and that the harm that comes from that is very likely to happen. - Yeah, I feel like when you think about it as a parent, you're right, I mean, you end up having this child or children, and all you think about is the absolute worst-case scenario. And, you know, I mentioned earlier on, you know, with PPA or postpartum anxiety, I know many moms that suffer from this and in some cases, you know, within the first year or two, it kind of dissipates somewhat. In some cases, you know, people need to go on medication and in some cases, you know, they feel completely better. But anyway, especially if you've experienced PPA or have PPA, things like, I don't know, hearing about a kidnapping, it's very far away, right? Even if it's a one in 14 million situation, it's all over the news, it's everywhere, it's in every news cycle. And especially with social media now, of course, you're hearing about these things more often than you would have ever before. You think to yourself, oh my gosh, like, I can't, you know, it's like this automatic barricade of like, I can't let my child go out of my sight, like what if this happens? And it's totally normal to obviously feel that way, especially when you hear about something that is really scary like that. What can we do as parents to kind of help our children engage more into rescue plays? So say you're a parent who's kind of been in that situation where they're like, oh, geez, I think I need to introduce this more into my child every day. And maybe I kind of, I don't know, I'm using the term helicopter parenting a little bit too much. But what can we do to kind of like pull back on those reins and kind of let them be a little bit more free and kind of almost encourage them to kind of engage in more risk? Is there something that we can be doing? - We can prepare the environment. So there's kind of three key ingredients to really good and fulfilling play environments. One is time, so actually making it a priority and realizing that kids need opportunities for play every day, space. So having the space for kids to be able to play and explore and having that be really stimulating, exciting space, and we can talk about what that looks like. And the third ingredient is freedom. So giving them the freedom to be able to explore and try, even if we might not like, you know, what comes out of it. - Sure. - And we'd add the fourth ingredient is other children, which can sometimes be challenging when you've got a neighborhood where no other kids are out. So there's other things that need to happen to make sure that there's other kids around. So as parents, you know, we wanna make sure that we wanna make it a priority, just like we would schedule say soccer practice, that we have a time that our kids every day can do this kind of play, that they have easy access to spaces, and ideally not ones that require us to take them to those spaces 'cause they wait for us to have time and, you know, on and forth. And that those spaces, when I talk about stimulating, we talk about kind of having lots of variety and affordances for play. And so some of the most stimulating spaces to us look like junkyards, you know, and they have reduced parts and crates and boxes and mud and sand and water and, you know, sticks and those kinds of things that kids can move around and kind of build and, you know, just let their imagination shape. - Sure. - And then, you know, we talked about the 17-second rule or, you know, whatever that looks like. But for parents to start kind of pulling back and trying to eliminate those don'ts, don't do this, don't do that. So that kids can really feel like, you know, and we've done our kind of due diligence around the hazards. We don't want any kind of serious hazards to be present. So that the kids can feel like they have the freedom to really explore those spaces and to let go and try things out. - Hey everyone, Lindsey here. Do you feel constantly overwhelmed by the scroll on social media? - Constantly drowning in a sea of saved screenshots of things you'll never go back to. An outfit and home photos that leave you feeling, I don't know, pretty empty. Yeah, been there, done that. That's why I ditched the never-ending feed of Instagram in 2021 and created Badass Matriarch, a sub-stack platform where you can breathe easy and get your mom fix on your own terms. Think of it like your own personal curated magazine delivered straight to your inbox. 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Looking forward to hanging out with you there. See ya. (upbeat music) - If you could create both an outdoor and an indoor space that is the definition of what you see as an area where kids can engage in rescue play, on structured play, what would they look like? - It would be a junkyard. (laughing) - And they have these, like, they're called adventure playgrounds. They used to be quite popular in the '70s and '80s and they grew out of the post-war era in Europe. So England, for example, still has a lot of them in different neighborhoods. I know there's one in New York and another in California, I think they're just, they're junkyards. And they're usually staffed by play workers. So these are adults who really know how to facilitate the play. So they help extend the child's vision. They don't kind of direct the kind of play. They just are there to support the kids. And if it's useful, or they stand back and just kind of let them do their things. But they are, as an adult that you look in, they really look like junkyards. - Yeah, I think the one in New York City is it's called the yard. And I've always, I really want to take our kids there. It's like two hours from us, but it does. It sounds very cool. So it literally looks like a junkyard. And yeah, there's some workers that kind of walk around. And like you said, they don't really engage unless you kind of need some help with something. And they certainly don't tell you to do something a certain way, or you can't do something. But they're just fascinating. And I guess that's a great segue into, I don't know much about the Canadian playgrounds in general. We've been to York a few times, have been to some amazing playgrounds, ones that certainly don't exist like that in the United States. And I would love to kind of hear from you, what you think about both the playgrounds, I guess, in Canada, where you are, and maybe what they could improve on. And then, you know, in the United States, there's plenty of imagery that you can kind of pull up about what playgrounds you used to look like and granted. Maybe we want to go back to all of those different things that they put into those playgrounds. But the amount of risky play that they were able to engage in in those playgrounds was obviously much higher than they are today. I feel like I go to a playground at my kid's school and I'm like, all they can do is like go down a slide and maybe do a couple of monkey bars, but even those are not high. And, you know, I don't know how much they're really getting out of those playgrounds that my kids have access to now. And the ones in Europe seem to be much more, like you were saying more of like that adventure playground. They've gotten rid of a lot of like things that spin around too fast. So I'd love for you to kind of touch on those things. - Sure, yeah. And we are still starting to see kind of a realization amongst some municipalities and landscape designers and stuff around the importance of building in kind of more risk elements into playgrounds. So that's really exciting to see. I'd say by and large, Canadian playgrounds look a lot like American playgrounds. You've got your, you know, your structure out of catalog that's been looked down and with only limited things to do because it's a fixed structure. You can't move it around. And so it like, okay, there's a slide and there's maybe a monkey bar and, you know, things like that. And not to say that those kinds of gross motor things aren't important, but they get really boring really quickly, particularly for kids, for example, if it's in their school playground and they're in that school for years and years and like day after day after day in the same playground, it's gonna get boring really, really quickly. So we've seen some kind of exciting new designs in Philadelphia, a studio Ludo landscape architecture firm did a beautiful playground there that's recently opened that looks amazing. I haven't seen it in person yet, but I've seen pictures. We have some examples in Canada too of kind of these shining bright, beautiful, kind of usually integrating nature and natural materials and water and modern sand and all of that into it so that you have, as I said, those loose parts that can be moved around. So I'm excited because these ideas are starting to spread more and the realization is starting to spread more, but you do definitely like the vast, vast majority are these kind of cookie cutter boring playgrounds. - Yeah, it's really fascinating. I can't remember exactly where we were. I think we're in, I wanna say it was Norway, but it was this unbelievably very cool hike where you would hike for, I don't know, maybe like a quarter mile and then in the middle of the woods where you would never expect for a playground to be, there would be a playground, but it was made of natural wood elements. There was even a zip line in the middle that took you all the way down to a different part of the forest and there were loose parts in it and there were, I don't know, these little cherry stumps that you could climb all the way up and then all the way back down. And obviously our kids said this was the best thing ever that they could walk through the woods and hike. We normally do, but every quarter mile, they got to stop and engage in play in these cool little playgrounds that they had outside. And I just thought to myself, gosh, like, what are we doing? Like, can we get this over in the United States, you know? And then so many times you think to yourself, there are many countries that look up to, you know, the United States and Canada for, you know, to be these like leading examples. And I'm like, this is just something that we are really dropping the ball on when it comes to kids. I just feel like there's so much opportunity there, but it's just not quite where it needs to be, you know? I want to kind of address those people that might live in a neighborhood, like you said before, that might not have other kids there. They might not have the ability to, I don't know, range too far from their home. Maybe they live on a very, I mean, highly main street where there's a lot of busy traffic. What can those parents do maybe within their home? Is there anything that you suggest for more risky play inside? I know I've seen there's like these climbing walls that you can put in and you can do these monkey bars and things like that. I mean, does that kind of have the same element to risky play as perhaps being outside? Is there anything those parents can do to kind of expose their kids without having to, you know, travel to a playground that might be 15 minutes or 20 minutes away or even farther? - Yeah, and we're really conscious about this because there's a real equity issue. We know from the research, you know, kids in higher density neighborhoods, over income, et cetera, are going to have a harder time accessing even the green space or, you know, a safe space that they can go to. And that's not okay. We need to fix that. Also sensitive that I don't want to put all of this burden on parents, you know, to try and fix this. This is an all of society issue and we should all be motivated to make sure that there are spaces within easy access of every child that they can play in as they want to. And so we are working, you know, on municipal planners and others around child friendly city design and all of that. Of course, that takes time. But hopefully we'll see those changes coming. In terms of what are we doing about it? So rather than put the burden on parents, it's thinking about how can we bring this to the places that children are already spending their time? And that would be school, it would be school, yeah. And so it's working with schools and childcare to incorporate these ideas and the way of thinking about their place spaces so that every kid, every day has these opportunities as part of just a regular school day. And so that the parents don't have to worry about yet another thing that experts are saying that kids need and that they can't provide, you know, and more on the parent guilt, right? So yeah, so it's on our mind and I really want to make sure that we think about it as a whole of society approach. - Sure. Do you do any work when it comes to talking to different school districts about perhaps what they could change about what's available to kids at all? Do you do any of that work? Or do you just kind of like have your research and then other people take that research and kind of bring it to like school admins and things like that? - No, we do a lot of work in our lab to make sure that the research that we do gets out to the people who can use it because otherwise, you know, what's the point, right? - Right. - So one of the, we just released a tool for schools and for teachers just a few months ago on outsideplay.org. And that was built by my PhD student Megan Zenny, who is a teacher, who has been a teacher for over 20 years in one of our local schools and who has done in that time, she teaches outdoors. And she's incorporating these concepts of risky play into her classroom. And so she has what looks like a, you know, a junkyard in the yard, you know, for kids to play with. So for her PhD thesis, she spoke to other teachers across BC who are doing, BC is our province, sorry, who are doing this work to see how are they doing it? How are they overcoming the challenges and barriers and what does it look like? And what do they wish that they had known when they were starting out? And so what do they want to tell other teachers who are thinking of doing things this way? How to do things? And so the teacher tool, which is on outsideplay.org has 16 little short 90 second two minute videos around things like dealing with urban hazards, dealing with rural hazards. What should you take with you? How do you teach literacy outdoors? What about numeracy? How do you write report cards? You know, how do you like make the learning visible? Those sorts of things. What does risky play look like in these contexts? How do you manage kind of some of the unexpected things that come up? And so really simple kind of videos that introduce each topic. And then we have deeper like 30 to 45 minute videos that people can delve into for each of those topics that they want to hear from an expert. And so we've been working with school districts. We're writing a grant now with one of our local school districts. How can we bring these ideas into the schools and actually a whole of systems change approach so that they're thinking differently at every level from, you know, the playground supervisors all the way through to the principals and the superintendents around how important this is and how they need to redesign the way they think about the school day. - Yeah, I love that so much. It really gives me hope that things will change. And we, I'll mention this too and maybe it might be coming to listeners, schools that might be listening. But we had, well, that past, I don't know, I don't know how maybe a couple of months ago, they're introducing K through, I believe it's five are now going to have more of a play based curriculum. And I don't really know exactly what that looks like yet, but just the thought of it got me excited. And I guess the kids will now go into school and, you know, a certain part of their day is now completely play based. And so they'll go in and be able to do a lot more things with their hands within the actual classroom while the teacher is trying to teach math or reading and they'll be able to kind of do things while the teacher is also trying to teach them. So like, I guess they gave this example of, you know, you go into the classroom and they're learning about math and adding and learning about change. And so one person, you know, is the pet store owner and one person is the person who catches them out and one person is the person that goes and buys, you know, whatever they need to buy at the pet store. And so they're able to kind of play and use this imaginary piece to kind of like learn, okay, this is how I do addition, this is how I, you know, would calculate out the cash. And, you know, it's kind of cool that they're introducing things like that because before that, I mean, our kids are just in a chair for, I mean, six hours a day. I mean, our kids really, at least where we are in Connecticut, I mean, my kids are like, yeah, we've got to recess twice a day, but it's like 15 minutes, you know, it's like, otherwise they're mostly in a chair. And so to kind of get them exposed to more plate-based curriculum is really exciting. And so maybe that might be happening to other schools around and maybe there are even 15 steps ahead of us, I don't know, but that was really excited to kind of hear that and just hearing from you, with everything that you guys are doing, to try to get your research out there and moving together these toolkits and everything is so immensely helpful. And I feel like just to organize the outside play.org has, I don't know when you guys created that, has it been a couple of years or? - Well, we've had it up for quite a while with many years. We just redesigned the site a few months ago because we were, we have three tools on there and 'cause there's one for childcare as well. And so, you know, when we're building it, we've had to get more and more sophisticated to reference it. - Yeah, well, I feel like it's, I mean, I have now heard about outside play.org through many of the books I've been reading and also, you know, articles that I come across and things like that. So I do feel like something is happening, right? Because I'm seeing it come up a lot more and I feel like, you know, the access to it has increased significantly. So you guys are doing a good job of getting it out there for sure. It's such a good tool for people. But before I let you go, I wanted to touch briefly on something I read about in the anxious generation. And it's where they start to talk about what Jonathan kind of defines as discover mode versus defend mode. And I found this to be really helpful in thinking about how this could affect, you know, how words keep play can affect my child in a more long-term type view. And so I would love for you to kind of talk about the concepts of that. And you might have different wording for it. And then just kind of talk to us about how they relate to a child's development. - Yeah, this is really exciting stuff. And it's new research that's coming out around the mental health benefits of risky play. And so, you know, we talked in the beginning about the definition of risky play. And I talked about thrill and excitement, right? And how strong those emotions are. So if you think about what happens to the body when you feel thrill and excitement, you know, your adrenaline kicks out and you're getting ready. It's like the fight or flight response. And so the difference between labeling that as thrill and excitement or what we would call discover mode in terms of kind of Jonathan Heights terminology versus fear and danger or defend mode is the brain. It's the brain that decides these feelings in my body are things that are pleasant and I need to move towards or these feelings are unpleasant and too overwhelming and too scary and I need to retreat. And so what we've seen with, and I have a colleague in the UK, Helen Dodd, who's doing work, she's a clinical psychologist and she's doing work around how do we help support and treat kids with anxiety. And so with kids with anxiety, what they have is they slip into defend mode, you know, as you call it or this kind of interpretation of things as dangerous or hazardous much more quickly, you know, more of a default. And so risky play, she's actually looking at how can risky play be used to help support and kind of change their approach to these kind of strong feelings and the engagement with uncertainty. And so if kids through risky play have more and more of these experiences of their body getting activated, but it's being, you know, that they see it as thrilling and exciting, then it helps them manage those strong emotions that come as they're going through their daily life and brushing up against uncertainty so that they are less likely to do the retreat or defend and to lean in and do discovery. - That makes a lot of sense. So basically, you know, the child that's in discover mode is seeing something that perhaps the child that might be slipping into anxiety, they might see that as being something super scary, they're gonna run away from it. Whereas the kid that's in discover mode is kind of run to it and think it's more of like this thrilling thing that they want to tackle or maybe get themselves into is basically how I'm kind of hearing you kind of describe. - Yeah, and if you think about our daily lives and how much we brush up against unfamiliar or uncertain situations, it's a daily multiple times the day thing. And so if we don't have the kind of capacity and skills to be able to cope and to not see all of those, you know, uncertainties that we brush up against as dangerous or threats, they're gonna be really exhausted, our bodies are gonna be exhausted or minds by seeing everything as a danger or a threat, something to be avoided. - Right. And are there any, what are the potential negative effects of a child that kind of shifts more into that defend mode? What would you kind of see in a more like long-term effect? - Well, I mean, in the clearest way it's greater levels of anxiety, more phobias, you know, those kinds of things that really can have quite crippling effects on children and you know, well into their lives, right? And we've also seen kind of less creativity, you know, less kind of just wanting to lean in and try and solve problems and come up with different solutions because they're afraid of getting things wrong. And so they don't wanna even take intellectual risks. You know, you see this and I'm seeing it with my students. I've seen a short time where they're less likely to take intellectual risks in their work because they're afraid of getting things wrong. - Yeah, are there any specific types of risky play? Like have you studied any specific things that kind of help those kids, you know, fixate more on like a discover mode type of mentality? Or is it kind of just, you've just studied, you know, risky play as a whole? Like is there anything that we can kind of pinpoint? - Yeah, I don't think it's so much that you have to pinpoint a certain kind of risky play or whatever it's. It's the atmosphere of risk being acceptable and a failure being okay, you know, that it's really important. And that doesn't just have to be physical risks, you know, as we talked it, you know, even in school or whatever. It's just the fact that, you know, to be successful, you need to fail a whole lot. You can take risks a whole lot and that that's the way. - Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I have a totally random question for you. What are your thoughts? I feel like this is such a controversial topic with parents and I'd love to just know your answer to it. What are your thoughts on trampolines? - Oh, yeah, I get the trampolines a lot. I know you're doing it. - And it's, I mean, trampolines are a lot of fun. Again, this is one where you can look at risks versus hazards, right? Being able to keep the risks and kids being able to have these experiences and manage the aspect. And I also have to say like when I talk about kind of preventing injuries and preventing serious injuries, for the most part, I'm not talking about broken bones. But with trampolines, there are actually ways to make them safer. So for example, not having kids on them and not having particular kids of different weights. That can be very hard, especially for the smaller kids. And, you know, making sure that there's, there's kind of the safety, netting and that sort of stuff in place, so that kids can try these out. And I don't know if you've ever traveled around, you know, places like Denmark and stuff, but you can have little pocket parks where they have little trampolines dug into the ground, you know, the kids can bounce but the height that they're falling from is much smaller because they're level with the ground. - Yeah, I have seen those, those are pretty cool. - Yeah, well, I think that there's ways that you can like anything, that you can look at the hazards and try and mitigate the hazards, but keep the risks. - Sure, yeah, I was just curious. I mean, my kids always go on my neighbor trampoline and I was like, you know, in the beginning, I was like, oh my gosh, trampoline, I work in the emergency department. This is very difficult for me. And the kids go on a trampoline. Because again, we're the people that only see the accidents, right, so it is, that is one of the hardest things because we're seeing all of the accidents, but yeah, if you put them into a statistic, it's very slim, but when you're somebody who's exposed to it all the time, it can be a little hard to, but anyway, they love the trampoline and there has been no accidents, so we're good over here. - And one thing to think about, like there will be injuries, you know, no doubt, but the way that we think about this is that from a population health perspective, do we wanna live in a society where we're trying to prevent every injury? And therefore, you know, the consequences of that, you know, in terms of physical activity levels and obesity and anxiety and so on, or do we need to accept that there's gonna be some level of injury to be able to allow kids to have this freedom and to be able to kind of explore their worlds? - Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so is there anything, as we kind of wrap up here, is there anything that you, I know we have so much more that we could talk to, but is there anything that you want to touch on that we might not have gotten to? - Well, I think I just wanna reiterate, like it's not about kind of making parents feel like this is yet another responsibility that they have on their plate. You know, when we talk to parents, there's three fears that come up around this. One is, you know, the fear of kidnapping. The other is the fear that their child will get seriously injured, usually by, like, say, get hit by a car. And the third is the fear that they'll be seen as a bad parent, and so, you know, the tool we have for parents on our website is really about, you need to kind of think deeply about what are your own priorities for your child? What are your really deeply held values and the values that you want, you know, your child to grow up with, right? And if you can tap into those, then it becomes easier to kind of block out the noise of other people telling you how you should parent. So you're like, yeah, but it's important to me that my child has this or that. And therefore, you know, those decisions around what you do come from a deep place of core values and a deep place of kind of relationship and trust and love for your child. - Yeah, all right, I'm going to end with two questions. The first question I have for you is if you could give one piece of advice to mothers, what would it be? And it doesn't have to be about the topic that we talked about today. - Go easy on yourself. You're doing the best you can. - I love that. - Second question is if you could make one meal for your family that everyone would eat that's relatively quick and easy, what would it be? - My husband does most of the cooking stuff. - My kids love the butter chicken I make, so probably butter chicken. - Butter chicken, and what do you say of it worth? Do you just have it alone or do you have it with rice or veggies, what do you throw with it? - Generally rice and non or something like that. - Yeah, I love it. Awesome, thank you so much, Mariana. I really appreciated you having you on here today. I'll be sure to link everything that you mentioned into the show notes that people have access to it. And thank you for coming on. - Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me, Lindsay. - Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. All resources mentioned in this episode can be found in the show notes on onesianco.com. To continue these important conversations, head over to motherhood meets medicine on Instagram. Let me know what you learned from this episode and who you would love to hear from next. I always love getting feedback from you. If you're finding value in this podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and share with a friend. This will help us to reach even more women from around the world. I'll catch you next week. Until then, don't forget to find some time to unplug, unwind, and have a little fun. (beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep)
