Our playgrounds are stick figures in a Michelangelo world - Why are playgrounds boring?

By Walter Steinwald. (Originally written June 26, 2015.)

Image by Molly Steinwald.

There are too many options for most of our life’s needs. Anytime we go to the store or Amazon we are forced to look at reviews, compare prices, options, styles and on and on. There are alternatives to pretty much any product on the market until suddenly we come to our children’s playgrounds. Any park our family has stopped at from New Mexico to New Hampshire is basically the same: swings, a slide, and some sort of platform. In city parks, National parks, private lands these play areas have withstood the free market force of research driven change or even novelty. Of all the products that could improve with research I think kids’ play areas ranks fairly high. But instead their form has been concretized.

What are the expectations for our kids regarding these play areas? What is the functional vision for these areas? It seems they could come with a plan or instructional booklet, because many are uni-directional, (“Don’t climb up the slide”, How many times have we heard that?) which amounts to running in circles with obstacles. Is this what we take them to the park for? And they have much fun doing this, but kids are amazing. Children trapped in war torn countries play soccer with tin cans and bare feet and have a great time doing it, but there is so much more that could be done. My kids won’t even attempt that game.

Playgrounds hold the potential to see children through a great deal and fill some of what childhood asks, the more obvious being: novel things, physical and mental challenges, and freedom tinctured with safety. Curiosity at times appears to be the motor for the child, driving them on and on, and giving them answers only spawns more questions. What does our basic play area do for this force? Well, unless they’re interested in tensile strength of rubber-coated steel, there’s not much to feed them here.

As far as freedom and challenges…. With nowhere to hide from sight or anything manipulative, I don’t know what kind of freedom these structures offer. As far as a challenge of some sorts, they offer stairs, which sometimes a toddler finds daunting, but other than those there is really nothing to cause alarm. How safe can we make a play place? Well it does seem we have hit the limit some ways back.

We wonder why so many children lack a healthy self-esteem after we have taken away challenges and replaced them with safety. I don’t think we have the ability to believe in ourselves if we are never tested - at least it is more difficult.

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