Rough and tumble play needed for today's children

 Children engage in rough play today, as they also did in the past. What is the same and what has changed? Researchers have taken a closer look and have a clear recommendation for today's parents and kindergarten and school staff.

Children like to engage in rough play and get into mischief. Survey participants who were young in the post-World War II era and in the 2000s relate stories about snowball fights, play fighting and scrumping for apples.

However, the content of the rough play has changed in line with societal developments.

Rough play then and now

Norderhus and Gunilla Eide Isaksen, NTNU assistant professor, and Maria Øksnes, a professor at NTNU, have investigated which elements of rough play have stayed the same and which have changed through three generations.

The survey is based on 90 individual interviews with three generations about their childhood memories in Norway. The sample consisted of women and men who were in their 20s, 50s and 70s.

The researchers hope that their findings will encourage parents and staff of kindergarten and school-age children to reflect more before they stop what they perceive as roughhousing.

The hunt for excitement

All the participants in the survey - both women and men - describe memories of rough play. Rough play is often associated with dangerous play, but the researchers noticed that what the three generations described as rough play was different.

These variations can be studied in more detail as either dangerous play, scary play or mischief. A common driver for these three types of play is the pursuit of excitement and fun.

The two older generations share stories about play that they themselves experienced as dangerous while it was going on, including play that led to injuries and deaths. The activities included playing in traffic, in the mountains and on mountain slopes, by rivers, on the shore and by water.

One of the older informants, Tore (72), tells about sledding with a steerable sled:

"Another kid and I came down the street at full speed and across the tram track and there came the tram, probably only a metre from hitting us. All I saw was black. We flew by. If it had been a tenth, maybe a hundredth of a second later, I wouldn't be here today."

The two older generations also said that it was easy to find dangerous materials and things. Both girls and boys tell of stone wars in which playmates were badly injured or died.

In the post-war years, it was also possible to find explosives and grenades that became part of their games.

Parental rules broken or forgotten

The participants express that it was exciting to visit dangerous places and play with dangerous things, and that they deliberately visited areas that were not supervised by adults.

Norderhus points out that all the interviewed generations tell stories of adults who had rules on where children were and weren't allowed to play. Children were not free to play anywhere they wanted, as we might believe today when we hear about playing in the "olden days."

"The children might have been instructed to be careful, but they quickly forgot that. We received a number of descriptions of relatively young children playing both on the street and by the water, which is probably unthinkable today. But as they themselves say, they learned the limits of their skills and how to look after each other," says Norderhus.

Source: News-Medical