American Reacts to European Playgrounds

Comments · 2.7K

• AV

  @avihenda · 11 months ago (edited)

  I’ve worked with both selling and designing playgrounds for the European market. In both USA and Europe, there are very strict rules and regulations surrounding playgrounds. There are mathematical calculations and rules governing everything in how a playground is built up and in Europe they are inspected by a special playground inspector after installation and should be inspected every year, once a year also. There’s also someone from the school, municipal or owner if the playground who inspects them between those. <br><br>Playground regulations are not exactly the same between the US and the EU (all of EU has the sale rulebook for playgrounds) but they are very similar. It’s a choice the US has made, to make their playgrounds as they have. The problem is that the US have decided that children should never hurt themselves. When I look at US playgrounds that’s what they tell me, safe is the most important thing. European playgrounds are designed around acceptable risk. A child can and should be able to hurt themselves, but the consequences should not be out of proportion. What that means is we all know the kiddoes will fall and hurt themselves, accidents happen, a broken arm is acceptable, broken neck is not. <br><br>A safe playground, is a boring playground and a boring playground will not be used. A well designed playground gives the illusion of danger, but the risk is on an acceptable level with probably several backup safety mechanisms you don’t see. If you are high up and feel like it’s a little bit dangerous, you get a trill of doing it, but you get a huge boost of confidence if you do the thing and get all the way up to the scary high platform and then get to go down the super cool slide. The slide down is your prize for beating the scary climb. The first playstructure they showed is a perfect example of this design principle. You need to climb the scary rope pyramid, up to the very top, where you get the prize, the cool little playhouse platform lets you hang about and see the views from high up, and then the ultimate prize, a super cool slide down. Safety features you don’t realise are present: if a child falls while climbing a rope pyramid, they are design so that the child will fall and strike several rope on the way down and therefor slow down, ultimately striking the ground, but every strike is a reduction of speed and lots of shorter but safer falls. Also the materials under the structure are special materials that will soften the impact and take the fall energy from the child and release it out into the material, reducing the impact. The sand under a structure or swing, is a special type of sand to do just that and is a completely different type than the sand in the playsand area. The distance between the ropes is also calculated so that children who are much to small to be in the structure, can’t reach or is slowed down so that an adult can hopefully reach them in time. Kids are usually careful and will back away if they are presented with a climb that is way to hard to them, if they are past age 4 ish, but you always have outliners and city kids motorskills are generally a year or two behind country kids. <br><br>The european general idea is it’s important to make cool and fun playgrounds to try to get kids to move their bodies more and use less screens or sitting still. Also it’s very important for children to fall and hurt themselves, so that they learn what is dangerous, that falling hurts, the worse you fall the more it hurts and an awareness of where their personal boundaries lies. If they don’t learn as children that doing dangerous stuff can have consequences, they will as young adults when the consequences are greater and sometimes final. <br><br>Thanks for coming to my TED talk and hopefully you will look at your local playground a little bit differently the next time you visit.<br><br>*Edited to add paragraphs

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• TE

  @Terkina__ · 11 months ago (edited)

  No one in Europe would sue the city because the child got injured on a public playground. A child needs to learn motor skills and develop the knowledge of how to be safe on these &quot;dangerous&quot; playgrounds. &nbsp;This is taken away with these plastic liveless playgrounds in the States.

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• NO

  @Nozick667 · 11 months ago (edited)

  In the US you have &quot;safe&quot; playgrounds, but then your child has to live in a society with guns and cars everywhere and you feed them food with poison in it. Makes total sense...

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• BS

  @bslizardette4669 · 10 months ago

  I loved those rope &quot;mountains&quot; as a kid. They offered much more active choice-making than the traditional ones. That being said, my brother was quite worried when his 4-year-old decided to try to conquer one but he let her climb and simply stayed nearby, ready to act in case she fell. She didn&apos;t. She climbed as high as she felt comfortable — couple meters off the ground — and then screamed in joy of her achievement so my brother suggested her to come down. I did get some ropeburns a time or two but it resulted more in increased excitement/adrenalin than fear.<br><br>I used to also climb tall trees next to roads as a child. My Mum would definitely say she&apos;d rather see me climbing these than those trees.

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• JI

  @jinroh1488 · 10 months ago

  In US, you can sue a company because coffee was too hot. In France, we know that you have a certain temperature to have good taste of coffee. If you get burnt, learn from your mistake. Nobody will sue for that.

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• YA

  @yaniargirov5399 · 11 months ago (edited)

  americans put kids in a little bit of danger too...they send them to school

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• ST

  @Styrestian · 11 months ago

  In kindergartens in Norway, we let kids use knives, saw wood, and cook ; all under close adult supervision, of course. It’s about teaching responsibility and confidence. When children get to handle real tools early on, they learn respect for them and how to stay safe, instead of just being afraid.<br><br>Parents actually feel much safer when they know their child is capable, independent, and able to think for themselves and make good decisions. When kids learn to handle tools safely or navigate small risks, it builds real confidence and trust. You’re not keeping them safe by controlling everything , you’re helping them become someone who can keep themselves safe.<br><br>In my many years working as a trained childcare assistant in kindergarten, I’ve only had to call a doctor a few times, and it was usually for minor things. <br>No big injuries, nothing serious. Kids get a few scrapes and bruises, but that’s just part of learning.<br><br>Playgrounds in Norway also follow strict safety regulations. The ground must be soft enough to absorb falls, there are limits on how high kids can climb, and everything has to be officially approved before it’s built. So even though children get to explore and take small risks, the environment around them keeps those risks manageable.<br><br>Healthcare here is better and much cheaper than in the U.S., so I understand why it might feel riskier there. One accident in the States can seriously hurt your finances. Here, that’s not really something parents have to worry about — which probably makes it easier to give kids more freedom.

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• AR

  @Ardis74 · 11 months ago

  In Spain, we have a saying: If you go out to play with your friends and come home without any injuries, you haven&apos;t had fun.

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• BL

  @blahorgaslisk7763 · 2 months ago

  I&apos;m from Sweden and when I was a kid we had something called build playgrounds. It was basically just an area to the side of a standard playground were kids could borrow saws, hammers and other tools and then build their own creations. At one such playground it resulted in a building about 40 meters long 30 wide &nbsp;with two to three stories. This was of course not built to any sort of standard but for something built by kids and without any plans it was rather fun. We used to play hide and seek and other games in there. Large parts of it was so tight that there were no way any grown ups could get in there, but for a ten year old kid it was roomy enough.. Built by kids there were a lot of exposed nails and such, but no one ever cared. You got a scratch that was just normal. But if I would be serious it was pretty darn dangerous compared to the regular playground. After some years it was decided it was all to dangerous for children so all these were torn down and the tools were removed from the playgrounds.<br><br>It was fun. It was slightly dangerous, and that&apos;s part of why it was so fun.<br><br>Since then things has gotten both better and worse. Most playgrounds has been modified to make them safe, real safe. The sand that used to be under the swings and all kinds of climbing walls or other things to climb on has been replaced with rubber to make it safer when kids fall. And that isn&apos;t wrong, but it also takes away one of the things you learn when playing. Doing something stupid enough will hurt, make cause real damage. If you break an arm or just get a bad enough bruise you remember what you did and usually don&apos;t do the exactly same stupid thing again. Yes kids learn by pain when the pain comes from doing something stupid. We need to learn that things can hurt. It helps us grow up!

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• JO

  @Johnsuri26 · 8 months ago

  As a dutchie Ive broken a arm, got stitches, different swollen bumps playing in these playgrounds haha its how we got hardened for life!

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• ON

  @Onegoodreaspn · 11 months ago

  How come overprotective parents in the USA are fine with letting their kids go to school where they need on site police, metal detectors and require active shooter drills? Tell me how that makes any sense at all?

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• VI

  @vincentbellamy · 10 months ago

  Hello, all playgrounds in Europe actually have only one purpose: to develop children&apos;s psychomotor skills. Children are not silly; they learn at their own pace.

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