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How old are the kids you are talking about? 20-month-olds are happy with literally any playground, especially if there are a few other kids. They are still lear

How old are the kids you are talking about? 20-month-olds are happy with literally any playground, especially if there are a few other kids. They are still learning the very basics of climbing, running, sliding, swinging, ... Most playgrounds are okay for 0–8 year-olds. It’s older kids, especially teenagers, who get most bored on de-risked modern playgrounds, and either give up on them or start looking around for (often quite stupid) ways to make them riskier, e.g. a group of 6 kids climbing onto a swing intended for 1 kid (thereby breaking it), riding their skateboards down the slide (and almost running over the toddlers at the bottom), climbing up onto the roofs of buildings that weren’t intended for climbing, throwing rocks at each-other, ... The playground near my house was re-done a few years ago, and the number of kids older than 10 has dropped dramatically. All of the toddlers are plenty happy with the new one, but it’s a net loss for the city because there are many good playgrounds for kids under 8, and very few for older kids. Aside: those rubber surfaces are very uncomfortable on bare feet any time the temperature is above 80°F. And often playground wood chips are full of extremely sharp corners (My adult friend stepped on a wood chip which punctured both his shoe and his foot). Sand, dirt, grass, and even concrete are all much more pleasant.

learc83 7y ago
I was a kid when we still had dangerous steel playgrounds and by the time I was in 5th grade, it wasn't cool to play on the playground. Middle schools never had them as far as I know. So around 10 seems to have always been the max age for playground equipment.
- Fricken 7y ago
  I used my local playground until I was 16. Now, nearly 30 years later I still go to the playground to play, but it's a climbing gym. People don't magically stop playing soccer, or baseball, or video games when they pass age 10, I don't know why we assume as much about playgrounds. A well built playground offers challenging terrain for kids of all ages.
  - learc83 7y ago
    I don't think that's really common though. We thought the playground was for little kids even though there was plenty of challenging terrain for us at the time.
  - hahajk 7y ago
    omg if I saw a 46 year old climbing around a playground by himself, I would... keep my child close to be sure. Is that the right reaction to have? I think it probably is.
    - Fricken 7y ago
      I think you're insane and I'm glad I'm not your kid.
      - learc83 7y ago
        In our current society it's certainly not normal for an adult to be climbing around on a playground alone. And it's not insane for a parent to approach such a situation with caution. And regardless of whether you agree with the OPs's reaction, that's the reaction that the vast majority of parents are going to have.
        Jamwinner 7y ago
        Oops, guess some parents are going to have a bad time. Their problem, not mine. Parks are for everyone to enjoy. Bigotry in action, and a slew of apologists. Sad.
        learc83 7y ago
        >Oops, guess some parents are going to have a bad time. No it's the 46 year old alone on the monkey bars who's going to have a bad time. At the very minimum police will run them off. There are plenty of cities that have ordinances banning unaccompanied adults from playgrounds, and a 46 year old who insists on doing this is just going to ensure their local municipality passes such an ordinance. I personally don't care if an adult wants to play on a playground, but making a kids only zone is hardly bigotry in action.
lazyasciiart 7y ago
How old are you? Thirty years ago at my local park teenagers were climbing onto sections not made for climbing, running up and down slides and occasionally knocking over smaller children, etc. It certainly wasn't a de-risked modern place.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  I’m 33. Anecdotally, a few years ago after redesign my neighborhood park went from a pretty decent number of 10–16 year-olds playing on the playground to now basically none, except sometimes high school skaters who bring their skateboards, or sometimes a mob of high school kids who will all cluster around the swings and look at their phones. I’m not saying that there haven’t always been teenagers doing stupid shit. But having riskier / older-kid-focused playground equipment does attract at least some teenagers who use them more or less as intended. I’d be curious to see better research about this though.
jimmaswell 7y ago
What is anyone doing with bare feet at a playground anyway?
- jacobolus 7y ago
  YMMV, but I would recommend all young children spend as much time barefoot as possible, and in thin flexible shoes the rest of the time (probably not a bad idea for older people as well, but the difference is most extreme for those just learning to move). In San Francisco, my 3-year-old can be barefoot outside most of the year; in places with hotter/colder weather shoes might be necessary during some months. Anecdotally, being barefoot dramatically improves kids’ rate/quality of learning basic locomotion (balance, stability, agility, speed). The kids I know who are habitually barefoot learn how to walk and run with a graceful and efficient gait in a matter of months and by 1.5 years old are quite mobile, while kids wearing stiff shoes often are still toddling around at age 3. (I’m sure gross quantity of practice also makes a big difference; some young kids are pushed all around in a stroller/car seat/etc. and spend very little time walking for themselves. The frequently-barefoot kids I know all spend a lot of time outdoors running and climbing around. I am sure even in identical circumstances there will be high variance in young kids’ motor skills. But I bet if we took a random sample of yuppies’ children in a modern suburb and compared them to a random sample of kids from a hunter–gatherer tribe somewhere, the differences would be quite stark.) It makes plenty of theoretical sense as well: (a) the bottoms of the feet are incredibly dense with nerves, and (b) the feet and lower legs have a huge number of tiny interconnected moving parts. If learning anything is largely a matter of trying a variety of minor adjustments and then gathering as much data about the result as possible, and then throwing it at our personal deep learning neural net machines (a.k.a. brains, specifically the motor cortex), then wearing stiff shoes is a huge handicap, both limiting degrees of possible motion and also obstructing most of the measurement apparatus.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    There is some interesting history to going barefoot in the US. Historically, poor southern whites went barefoot because that was cheaper than buying shoes. This barefoot lifestyle ensured they would stay poor by infecting them with hookworm, giving them lifelong anemia. This gave rise to the stereotype of the poor southern white as pale, lazy, and sluggish. Getting these people to wear shoes was actually a major public health accomplishment.

learc83 7y ago

I was a kid when we still had dangerous steel playgrounds and by the time I was in 5th grade, it wasn't cool to play on the playground. Middle schools never had them as far as I know. So around 10 seems to have always been the max age for playground equipment.

Fricken 7y ago
I used my local playground until I was 16. Now, nearly 30 years later I still go to the playground to play, but it's a climbing gym. People don't magically stop playing soccer, or baseball, or video games when they pass age 10, I don't know why we assume as much about playgrounds. A well built playground offers challenging terrain for kids of all ages.
- learc83 7y ago
  I don't think that's really common though. We thought the playground was for little kids even though there was plenty of challenging terrain for us at the time.
- hahajk 7y ago
  omg if I saw a 46 year old climbing around a playground by himself, I would... keep my child close to be sure. Is that the right reaction to have? I think it probably is.
  - Fricken 7y ago
    I think you're insane and I'm glad I'm not your kid.
    - learc83 7y ago
      In our current society it's certainly not normal for an adult to be climbing around on a playground alone. And it's not insane for a parent to approach such a situation with caution. And regardless of whether you agree with the OPs's reaction, that's the reaction that the vast majority of parents are going to have.
      - Jamwinner 7y ago
        Oops, guess some parents are going to have a bad time. Their problem, not mine. Parks are for everyone to enjoy. Bigotry in action, and a slew of apologists. Sad.
        learc83 7y ago
        >Oops, guess some parents are going to have a bad time. No it's the 46 year old alone on the monkey bars who's going to have a bad time. At the very minimum police will run them off. There are plenty of cities that have ordinances banning unaccompanied adults from playgrounds, and a 46 year old who insists on doing this is just going to ensure their local municipality passes such an ordinance. I personally don't care if an adult wants to play on a playground, but making a kids only zone is hardly bigotry in action.

lazyasciiart 7y ago

How old are you? Thirty years ago at my local park teenagers were climbing onto sections not made for climbing, running up and down slides and occasionally knocking over smaller children, etc. It certainly wasn't a de-risked modern place.

jacobolus 7y ago
I’m 33. Anecdotally, a few years ago after redesign my neighborhood park went from a pretty decent number of 10–16 year-olds playing on the playground to now basically none, except sometimes high school skaters who bring their skateboards, or sometimes a mob of high school kids who will all cluster around the swings and look at their phones. I’m not saying that there haven’t always been teenagers doing stupid shit. But having riskier / older-kid-focused playground equipment does attract at least some teenagers who use them more or less as intended. I’d be curious to see better research about this though.

jimmaswell 7y ago

What is anyone doing with bare feet at a playground anyway?

jacobolus 7y ago
YMMV, but I would recommend all young children spend as much time barefoot as possible, and in thin flexible shoes the rest of the time (probably not a bad idea for older people as well, but the difference is most extreme for those just learning to move). In San Francisco, my 3-year-old can be barefoot outside most of the year; in places with hotter/colder weather shoes might be necessary during some months. Anecdotally, being barefoot dramatically improves kids’ rate/quality of learning basic locomotion (balance, stability, agility, speed). The kids I know who are habitually barefoot learn how to walk and run with a graceful and efficient gait in a matter of months and by 1.5 years old are quite mobile, while kids wearing stiff shoes often are still toddling around at age 3. (I’m sure gross quantity of practice also makes a big difference; some young kids are pushed all around in a stroller/car seat/etc. and spend very little time walking for themselves. The frequently-barefoot kids I know all spend a lot of time outdoors running and climbing around. I am sure even in identical circumstances there will be high variance in young kids’ motor skills. But I bet if we took a random sample of yuppies’ children in a modern suburb and compared them to a random sample of kids from a hunter–gatherer tribe somewhere, the differences would be quite stark.) It makes plenty of theoretical sense as well: (a) the bottoms of the feet are incredibly dense with nerves, and (b) the feet and lower legs have a huge number of tiny interconnected moving parts. If learning anything is largely a matter of trying a variety of minor adjustments and then gathering as much data about the result as possible, and then throwing it at our personal deep learning neural net machines (a.k.a. brains, specifically the motor cortex), then wearing stiff shoes is a huge handicap, both limiting degrees of possible motion and also obstructing most of the measurement apparatus.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  There is some interesting history to going barefoot in the US. Historically, poor southern whites went barefoot because that was cheaper than buying shoes. This barefoot lifestyle ensured they would stay poor by infecting them with hookworm, giving them lifelong anemia. This gave rise to the stereotype of the poor southern white as pale, lazy, and sluggish. Getting these people to wear shoes was actually a major public health accomplishment.