Eight-year-old Max jumped on a silver float to navigate the waterways of the Woeste Westen – an Amsterdam wilderness where children can climb trees, get wet, make fires, and encounter risk.
“Children are barely taught how to deal with danger, and danger is always there,” said his grandmother, Marli Huijer. “But if you take risks away, then you don’t learn how to deal with them and then when danger comes, you simply don’t have the skills.”
This is why Max was romping around in the semi-wild park. And it is the kind of rough-and-tumble play that looks likely to become an official part of the city’s playground and children’s activity policy.
Melanie van der Horst, head of open space and Sofyan Mbarki, head of sport, have recommended that the council should adopt a new policy to promote “challenging and adventurous” outdoor play – even if it means the risk of the odd scraped knee.
An assessment by the local audit office last November found that the city had invested far too little in maintaining the 1,664 playgrounds. At the same time only three in five children between four and 12 meet national guidelines for daily activity and have become a generation “sitting in”, according to play charity Jantje Beton.
In a response to a new initiative by D66 to promote rough-and-tumble play, Van der Horst and Mbarki have this week recommended improving playgrounds accepting some level of risk and trying to stimulate adventurous play – rather than choosing from the usual catalogue of equipment.
If there is an accident, they said, this will not automatically mean closing playgrounds, but instead evaluating what has happened.
Rob Hofland, head of D66 in Amsterdam and one of the policy initiatiors said he was delighted that adventurous play has already been added to the criteria for developing new playgrounds.
“That’s to do with height and speed, that children can take risks and learn to take them,” he said. “Because to be honest, a lot of playgrounds right now are pretty boring…Dutch children have been the sitting champions of Europe for a while, and adventurous play and taking risks might involve the odd scraped knee. But the real battle is to get children away from their iPads.”
The policy idea – which will be voted upon by councillors after the summer break – defines “stoer spelen” or tough play as “exciting, challenging and adventurous ways of playing” that includes physical surprise and an element of danger. Hofland, who was born in Meppel, said he remembered looking out of his window at a tree on the square outside and longing to be able to climb it.
“The lowest branch was quite high and I’m rather small,” he said. “So I looked at it for a long time before I could play in it. The first time, I climbed really high and then I didn’t dare come back down! I learned from that too. And I wanted other children to have that same experience.”
Gaming
Outdoor play campaigners Jantje Beton earlier this month petitioned the Dutch parliament to put outdoor play on the agenda, handing in a survey suggesting more than 400,000 children never or hardly ever play outside.
However, just over half of 590 children from six to 12 surveyed said they preferred adventurous play to gentle games – and said they would choose this over gaming.
At Woeste Westen in the Westerpark on Friday afternoon, Max ran happily past children roasting marshmallows and celebrating birthdays. “There’s lots of nature and I like that,” he said. “And you can do everything!”
