Reintroducing Adventure Into Children's Outdoor Play Environments

Over the last decade, awareness about the changing nature of children's play has gradually increased, leading to some concerns that outdoor play, particularly unstructured outdoor play, is rapidly declining. Reasons for these changes are diverse and multilayered, rooted in ever-evolving sets of social and parental expectations and the children's needs for entertainment and self-expression. Parents are struggling with competing, rational, and emotive judgments ( personal and social in nature) about positive and negative risks associated with play. As suggested in this article, adventure playgrounds are a specific type of outdoor play environments that have the potential to offer an abundance of developmental opportunities for children to grow emotionally, socially, and physically.