{"id":19801,"date":"2018-02-08T11:57:36","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T16:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19801"},"modified":"2018-02-08T11:57:36","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T16:57:36","slug":"activating-aurora-the-everyday-uncertainties-of-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/activating-aurora-the-everyday-uncertainties-of-play\/","title":{"rendered":"ACTIVATING AURORA: The \u201cEveryday Uncertainties\u201d of Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ron Weese<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the greatest threats to the development of a child\u2019s self-confidence, their competence in skill development, participation in healthy physical activity and general happiness is community and parental attitude towards risk, according to Brandy Tanenbaum, Program Coordinator of the Office of Injury Prevention at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
\n\u201cEvery parent wants a happy and healthy child,\u201d she states, \u201cand providing children with opportunities to experience physical activity that is sometimes risky, benefits children\u2019s confidence and resilience.\u201d She continues, \u201cchildren flourish when they \u2018approach and explore\u2019 rather than \u2018flee or freeze\u2019.\u201d
\nMs. Tanenbaum ought to know. She works at helping people avoid catastrophic injury and is an expert on the cause and prevention of injury. She has worked extensively in sport in Canada.
\nOne would think by where she works that she would be the most risk-averse person on the planet but she isn\u2019t. In fact, she is a proponent of measured risk-taking. She believes, as many others in the field do, that healthy risk-taking is a part of the human experience and that play is an important part of that experience.
\nE.B.H. Sandseter, in the 2009 paper \u201cCharacteristics of Risky Play,\u201d suggests that children are drawn to \u201crisky play\u201d where they experience what is called a \u201cscary-funny\u201d feeling. This emotional experience results in exploring personal boundaries and thereby strengthening physical, cognitive and emotional skills. Sandseter also reports that some adults tend to \u201cget stuck\u201d in a risk-protective mode, and constrain children to controlled, predictable and \u201csafe\u201d play. Tanenbaum, a certified risk manager, refers to this as \u201csafety creep\u201d and it can be reversed.
\nNo one is advocating the exposure of children to injurious conditions or activities, but there is a difference between risk and hazard. Encouraging children to explore rather than avoid new experiences that might result in a scraped knee or shin is valuable. For one thing, it teaches kids about how to approach new activities and manage risk effectively. They learn their limits and can therefore test them safely, knowing consequences.
\nSo what is a parent to do? According to the experts, it really requires a \u201cre-framing\u201d of the notion of play and risk. And it isn\u2019t easy, particularly for a risk-averse parent. Parents are encouraged to choose happiness that comes from play, good health and physical fitness that comes from physical activity, and confidence and resilience that comes from unsupervised play, particularly outdoors, as a high priority for their kids.
\nChoosing to let kids learn from mistakes, recognizing the good intentions in others such as coaches, teachers and leaders, and being able to make one\u2019s way in the world is also important. Play and participation in sport also does that. Having friends, belonging to a group and having something to feel passionate about while contributing to the \u201cworld\u201d are important \u201clenses\u201d through which we encourage a child\u2019s participation in activity and sport.
\nMs. Tanenbaum will be exploring these topics at the Sport Aurora Sport Summit on February 23 and 24. Parents, coaches and sport leaders are invited to attend and engage in this important and personal topic. Our kids need to be safe, feel safe and have the confidence to explore and develop. It is our job to provide the right environment for that to occur.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ron Weese One of the greatest threats to the development of a child\u2019s self-confidence, their competence in skill development, participation in healthy physical activity and general happiness is community and parental attitude towards risk, according to Brandy Tanenbaum, Program Coordinator of the Office of Injury Prevention at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. \u201cEvery parent wants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-59n","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 10:45:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}