Outdoor play, including its inherent risks, is, from an evolutionary perspective, a primary developmental experience for young people—yet the opportunities for nature-based experiences are severely restricted due to the highly urbanized, technological, distracted, and risk-averse societies many of us live in. Researchers Mantler and Logan remind us that
ancestral experiences and evolutionary processes continue to influence the brain in ways that may escape conscious awareness by contemporary adults. It is becoming increasingly evident that the 2.2 million years our genus has spent in natural environments are consequential to modern mental health.1
So, if our evolutionary blueprint still has much to teach us, we should be open to the possibilities that some human functions, such as being exposed to risk, may in fact be important. While most child injury prevention specialists, and others, would argue that this premise is seemingly dangerous and unnecessary, we (the authors) believe in risk as a human experience, that it should be experienced in ways that provide growing opportunities and stay within our ethic to do no harm. That said, there is dignity, and a right, in being allowed to experience life fully, including its risks and possible setbacks. Author John Burroughs once stated he went into nature for his soul “to be soothed and healed, and to have [his] senses put in order.” This commonly cited and Romantic notion of contact with nature for health, in our view, acknowledges that going to nature may in fact adjust or realign one’s senses (feelings, thoughts, attitudes). This, to us, may happen through personal explorations and adventures, which might result in personal disruptions or discomfort. Being in nature, and participating in outdoor play, comes with risk, which, we argue in this chapter, is a necessary factor in child and youth development. Further, risk becomes a valuable means to engagement in nature-based therapy practice. We remind readers that risk is already present in the lives of many children and families due to social, economic, and other factors. Issues of marginalization and lack of safe and accessible outdoor environments prevent many children from free outdoor play, especially unsupervised in wilder spaces. We know we are speaking in general terms and that our offerings will not apply to all clients across contexts; this book, and the practices of nature-based therapy, are primarily directed toward those families who are experiencing issues that will benefit from a nature-based approach. Some children and families are already exposed to too much risk and deserve to be protected, and others are overprotected and deserve to experience risk. For our practice, we frame risk as a developmental need and specifically identify risks as being constructed during outdoor play in nearby nature. We advocate for practitioners and parents to begin dialog on “the right to risk” as equally important as a child’s right to play. This chapter outlines some of the research and theory of outdoor risky play that support case examples throughout the book that utilize the approach.
A growing body of scientific evidence and supportive literature aims to shift thinking about protecting children from all harm (i.e., injury prevention focused on the elimination of all risk) to a position more open to risk exposure, with increasing understanding of risk’s value in healthy child development. Risk has two sides: the potential for loss and the potential for gain. Modern Western society is highly risk averse and often forgets the positive gains that engaging with risk provides. While not easy to explain how we got here—for many children “here” is a hyper-protective state—the reality is that most of them are protected from many learning experiences more common to previous generations. Easy examples that those over thirty can remember include riding bicycles over home-made jumps (often without helmets), ranging farther from home at a young age, and that most outdoor play was unsupervised! Just reflect on how these opportunities provided lessons, even when things didn’t go well, compared to children’s experiences today. Research now suggests this change may be at a cost in child development: reduced capacities in creativity, judgment, confidence, and decision-making and increased phobias in later years.2 From an evolutionary perspective, play, particularly in its rougher and riskier forms, can allow children to address anxieties and reduce reservation in certain contexts. This has been shown when children are allowed to complete risk-related activities repeatedly and when the challenging experiences become gradually more complex.3 Outdoor play in general (not just risky play), often unsupervised, has also been shown to increase positive social relationships and creativity.4 Our argument for outdoor risky play is bolstered in light of the evidence for a range of positive benefits in general: increased physical activity, social activity, vitality, positive affect, life satisfaction, and cognitive performance; improved heart rate variability; as well as reduced anxiety, depression, cortisol levels, sympathetic tone, systematic inflammation, and improved blood pressure.5
While the science and anecdotal evidence portraying positive outcomes from time in nature grows, the ever-increasing aversion to risk in our society exerts constraining forces upon teachers, human service workers, therapists, parents, and others who wish to engage with outdoor risky play. The struggle is when a practitioner experiences the tension between allowing healthy risk-taking by children and protecting themselves against claims of negligence. Social scientist and professor Ulrich Beck established a conceptual frame for what he called the risk society.6 He claimed today’s institutions (i.e., schools, government, etc.) and their subsequent philosophical belief systems, established during post-industrial society, marked a turning away from the guidance and wisdom embedded in nature and tradition. He suggested that the new risk society places higher value on technology and science, tending to ignore more culturally established belief systems, fate, seasonal realities, and common sense. It is concerned with control and systems of prediction to assess and manage diverse possible futures.7 Science, technology, and the mechanistic worldview of Cartesian-Newtonian logic have become the central players in this transformation, leading to decision-making that operates at the conservative end of the risk spectrum.
Adding fuel to current levels of risk avoidance, today’s incessant and pervasive hyper-media overexposes negative events and accelerates parent worry—for example, fear of strangers—creating hyper-parenting (i.e., trying to provide every advantage for your child) and helicopter parenting (i.e., trying to protect your child from any real or perceived danger). If one is susceptible to negative messages, most newscasts today could sink one into a depressive mood. The extent of change from a society of nature and tradition to one of scientific prediction of future risk has led to significant diminishment of childhood experiences like self-exploration, decision-making, and confidence-building through playing in nature. Opportunities to safely engage in outdoor risky play are all but gone, unless in situations we create. The days of children running wild around the neighborhoods until they are called in at dark is a thing of the past. We can be nostalgic about our experiences, if we had them, or we can be pragmatic about educating others and reversing yet another “extinction of experience.” So, children have far less free play than previous generations, are spending only minutes outside playing each day, and when they do, often are on playgrounds designed by injury prevention specialists as opposed to child development specialists.8
Risky play has been envisioned in six distinct forms, each providing a differing experience of risk and opportunity for child development. Norwegian early childhood education professor Ellen Beate Sandseter9 has been at the forefront of this research and took the lead on developing the following categories of risky play, primarily in the context of early learning care and education settings. Consider examples for each type of risk from your childhood and that of your children or young clients. Imagine how and where each can be “experimented with”:
• Heights (climbing, jumping)
• High speed (swinging, sliding, running)
• Dangerous tools (knives, axes, ropes)
• Dangerous elements (moving water, edges, fire)
• Rough and tumble (wrestling, play fighting, swordplay)
• Disappearing/getting lost (hiding, playing alone outdoors, exploring new areas)
Sandseter described children testing themselves with the ambiguous middle ground between feelings of fear and excitement during outdoor risky play, demonstrating a form of self-monitoring through engagement and avoidance of risk, which produces intense arousal and pleasure.10 The affordances (theory described in chapter 2) of natural outdoor play spaces are closely tied to the intensity of the activities, along with the allowance of risk by nature-based therapy practitioners. Note that outdoor risky play is but one sub-category of physical play, which is described as active, exciting, and having elements of risk, and that we are not exploring here the full potential of play in general. Physical play itself is just one category in the broader typology of play. Although play has been thoroughly researched and articulated elsewhere for educational, developmental, and therapeutic ends, it often is overlooked and underappreciated in practice.
Taking a positive developmental approach to risk, and distinguishing hazards (potential for harm) from risks (potential for benefits too), allows us to design experiences and sessions that engage risk in outdoor play that does not unnecessarily place the client in harm’s way. A child playing alongside a swollen and fast-flowing creek during spring runoff is exposed to a hazard, with little potential for a positive experience if he comes in contact with it. Conversely, a child competently climbs a tree to a height where she begins to experience fear; she has been exposed to risk in which she was challenged, and may be close to her threshold for risk, yet can develop risk-assessment and judgment in how to act and has also tested her physical capacity. It is the emotional place between fear and excitement that children have identified as desirable in their risky play. Children in Sandseter’s research, when trying to put words to these experiences, offered the descriptions “tickle in my tummy” and “scaryfunny” that, in reflection, are quite insightful.
Kids are still playing outside at school, right? Sandseter and others11 have argued persuasively for the developmental benefits of less predictable and dynamic outdoor play spaces for children over the usual artificially colored playscapes and flat playfields. Their basic argument is that contrived government safety-approved playgrounds are not as dynamic or diverse as natural settings and are designed to drastically reduce hazards and risks, leaving much less opportunity to challenge children’s judgment, abilities, and curiosity. Trees, for example, afford ample choices for branches, height, time off the ground, and a host of play opportunities. Monkey bars, on the other hand, as safe as they have been designed, clearly limit what children can do. The affordances are radically different: equidistant spacing, stable height, identified start and finish places, padded landing areas, etc. The manufactured playscape pales in comparison to tree climbing from a self-directed, creative, or exploratory perspective. In short, children develop more skills and self-knowledge when they can engage with an environment, especially when the natural environment can provide nuanced interaction to indicate success or failure. Think of crossing a stream on stones spaced out at step length. How far apart are the stones? Are they equal in distance, stable, wet or dry? What happens if I slip? Children prefer to use an artificial playscape in creative ways and not those by design: climbing outside the structure rather than through it as planned; collecting and sorting found objects under it; using it as an obstacle in games of chase, tag, grounders, etc. Designers and builders are not allowed to leave loose parts, a favorite of children. Surfaces have to shed water and be soft and durable, so soil and sand are less often found; again, playing in the dirt is another childhood favorite (although less so now as children are becoming far more sensitive to even getting their hands and clothes dirty). Children and youth alike, and many parents, enjoy building shelters in nature. This seems a natural and evolutionary-influenced function to us (i.e., making a home in nature). Because the activity involves larger loose parts like branches and fallen trees—not found in schoolyards, or even local parks—this type of activity requires being off-trail in a natural area.
“The biggest risk is keeping kids indoors.” That was the title of the Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth in Canada just a few years ago.12 This annual report provides direction on children’s health to Canadians through the lens of active play, physical literacy, and sedentary behavior, which are key factors related to numerous hypokinetic diseases currently on the rise, such as obesity and diabetes. That same year, two systematic reviews and a published position statement calling for increased access for all kids to play outdoors.13 The authors, and there were many, promoted outdoor active play—along with its inherent risks—as an essential ingredient for healthy child development.14 While child development is understood as more than just physical, others have also called for children to have increased contact with nature and free play for broader health benefits and potentially clinical applications.
Children and adolescents have had significantly reduced free play time over the past half-century in many nations while concurrently exhibiting a sharp rise in mental health pathology, which is not hard for today’s parents to see.15 This is an often-used play on adults’ nostalgia: they only have to think back to their own childhood and compare it to their children’s freedom to roam, play time unsupervised, and level of risk exposure. For me (Nevin), I try hard to allow my kids to roam and play as much as possible without direct parent supervision. I am privileged, however, to live on a quiet rural road away from traffic, city noise, and general busyness. Still, I consider my children’s access to risky outdoor play more constrained than my own.
Benefits derived from contact with nature range from the restoration of attention, stress reduction, positive mood states, and emotional regulation to physiological health improvements from time spent in nature, as we outlined in chapter 3. Literature on connecting with nature accepts attention restoration theory without much critique and continues to suggest that nature is inherently stress-reducing and restorative. We want to be clear that we contest this assumption because, for example, the risks of being lost, cold, or alone in nature are not likely be restorative experiences; likewise, wilderness environments may be associated with traumatic experiences in certain clients’ personal, cultural, and generational histories. We do agree though, that under the right conditions and context, being in nature and accepting its inherent risks can be both restorative and meaningfully disruptive (i.e., burdensome, tiring, challenging) to one’s mental, physical, and affective states. As Burroughs indeed suggested, we get our “senses put in order.” Our recognition of the potential for both parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system engagement allows us to design nature-based interventions and sessions which best address client needs.
Today, many practitioner-friendly and research-informed books describe a range of outdoor therapeutic approaches; however, we haven’t yet seen literature connecting therapeutic practice content with outdoor risky play. Only recently the topic has gained some attention in the early childhood development field, and we welcome these efforts as they extend support for our work. We have found great resources published in the past few years that help define our understandings and practice of outdoor risky play in nature-based therapy. Balanced and Barefoot, written by pediatric occupational therapist Angela Hanscom, argues for unrestrained outdoor play, especially active engagement with nature, as critical for children’s physical and cognitive development.16 Her easily accessible writing is very hands-on for parents and educators, providing readers with plenty of activities and tips to try. Two recent academic textbooks have delivered the latest in research and practice on outdoor play. First, a 700-plus-page edited tome, The SAGE Handbook of Outdoor Play and Learning17 describes theories, frameworks, and methodologies for research and critical reflections on outdoor play for children from leading international researchers and practitioners. The second, Outdoor and Nature Play in Early Childhood Education,18 will influence the education of child and youth educators, at least in Canada. The authors have produced a comprehensive training book full of theoretical and practical applications, with case examples, images, and activities throughout. These publications are exciting for us to see, indicating that other fields and sectors are taking outdoor play seriously as an academic topic.
Facilitated activities outdoors range from sitting, walking, and exploring natural areas to more adventurous, and risk-related, play-based activities such as climbing, chasing, and sword play with branches. Professional and parental attitudes toward risk-taking are obviously influential on our work, and we take great care to ensure the safety of our clients. As we advocate for risky play as a central feature to our work, readers may raise additional concerns about this in therapeutic practice. What we can say is this: please read along and ask how risk sits with you. Do you see its benefits? Do you see limitations and challenges to this engagement in outdoor risky play? And what could you do in your context on this front? This chapter may prompt readers in the counseling, development, rehabilitation, and other therapy realms to consider how they constrain or enable outdoor risky play in their practices. If your contemplation of these questions has you interested in experimenting, then we may have done our job. We don’t want children to get hurt through risky play. However, it pains us to think that many children miss out on potential developmental opportunities because they have not been allowed to experiment with risk—to test and expand their limits and to build confidence, regardless of ability, social, or economic contexts.
Nature-based child-centered play therapy has recently been articulated in the literature and shares, in some ways, aspects of our approach, such as choosing a safe, accessible, and appealing natural venue for sessions; establishing boundaries; and utilizing natural materials for play and exploration. University of Florida researchers Jacqueline Swank and Sang Shin described this approach as a framework that brings traditional child-centered play therapy into a structured and private nature context.19 They also stated that “nature is the playroom and natural materials are the therapeutic toys.”20 In contrast, our practice incorporates multiple approaches (i.e., play, adventure, family, narrative, somatic, and cognitive behavioral therapies) within diverse parks and natural spaces near our clients’ community. Our practice is also philosophically centered on not perpetuating a human–nature dualism (i.e., nature as playroom, nature as toys). We try instead to connect our clients with nature in order to reunite them as part of nature rather than using nature as a resource to benefit from. This multifaceted therapeutic approach means we can adapt easily to logistical and clinical needs of clients and their families (accessible locations) and service a range of ages (~6 years old through adulthood). We have the opportunity to match outdoor locations to the goals and developmental level of each unique client and family. A young child may prefer a familiar park or beach to explore, while a teenager may prefer the challenge of a dense forest or rock scrambling to maintain their engagement in the therapeutic process. We can also match the inherent risk of the landscape and activity to their emotional and physical needs. It is often assumed that therapy demands containment and clear boundaries (such as in the case of trauma treatment); however, some presenting issues may be better serviced by encountering the unknown together (client and counselor), such as in the case of anxiety and emotion-regulation challenges.
Children’s highly constrained outdoor play, and specifically risky play, is effected by inflated public perceptions of risk, and subsequently enforced by the risk society. Also, any parent allowing their child to climb up the outside of a playscape in a public park may have seen, heard, or felt the uninvited scorn of other parents, even if they believe their child can competently complete the task. I (Nevin) had to answer to a group of older hikers on a local marine backpacking trail who were prepared to call the child protection authorities on me for allowing my then 6-year-old son to prepare and light a beach fire while I was cooking dinner on a portable campstove some 40 feet away. The reality of adventuring and playing outdoors is that children and youth, and sometimes parents too, may get hurt. Compared to accident and injury statistics of playing sports or being driven in a car, these activities are relatively harmless. In the case of my son, he was using his own knife, a 5th-birthday gift, which he had learned to use safely. He was asked to make the fire, a task he had completed before under supervision numerous times. I was not prepared for the negative reactions of the adults I encountered, most shocking as they appeared to be over 50 (i.e., I assumed they would be less risk averse). As my son looked to me for direction, I told our concerned visitors that all was well, and he carried on lighting the fire. The following three sections provide rationales for incorporating outdoor risky play in nature-based therapy: (1) to activate the anti-phobic response, (2) to assist in nervous system regulation and maintaining boundaries, and (3) to develop self-efficacy and foster resiliency.
In addressing childhood anxieties, the non-associative theory suggests that exposure to risk is developmentally related and that children need to be presented with opportunities to test and adapt to risk as they grow.21 Anxiety around heights, for example, is developmentally appropriate at earlier ages, yet with exposure and practice, a child moves past the fear and can rationally determine how high to climb based on their competencies and self-knowledge. Given ample opportunities to experiment while tree climbing, a child can develop skills and knowledge about their own capacity, as well as the physical strength to manage various situations. If they were never allowed to climb trees, it stands to reason that they have not had the opportunity to overcome this fear.
It could be argued that our evolutionary capacities are not compatible with our current environments. Put simply, our indoor, electronic, and media-influenced lives have removed us from the daily challenges of outdoor living and travel for which we were evolutionarily designed (i.e., humans were designed to walk a distance of about a half marathon daily, acclimatize to daily and seasonal temperature change, and sleep when it gets dark and not stay up under artificial light). As most children grow and develop, the risks they face through challenging environments and experiences are significantly minimized today, and the fear of those risks that were appropriate earlier in life remain intact, thereby producing anxiety. While the evidence for this assertion is just being established, we know that inactive children become inactive adolescents and are much less likely to be active adults. If this truth stands, then it’s not hard to accept that children need to address their fears and anxieties as they grow and develop, including those related to risky activity. Current levels of mental health issues (e.g., anxiety and depression) in adolescent populations mentioned earlier in the book should suggest that something is surely amiss in child development.
As outlined above, North American children spend much of their time indoors, and the likelihood of encountering authentic risk when outdoors is minimal due to the highly managed and constrained environments in which they now play (e.g., play spaces with cushioned surfaces, significantly lower swings). We argue that invaluable opportunities are being missed, such as navigating real risk, particularly with the support of an attentive adult. We advocate for children to have experiences of authentic risk to learn how to regulate their stress response and to develop respect for adhering to boundaries and understanding limits.
Opportunities to engage in risky play allow for the activation of our sympathetic nervous system. However, there is a clear beginning and end to the heightened experience due to it being offered in an intentional manner. Engaging in outdoor risky play brings forward the life-preserving faculties of our mammalian nervous system, which offer profound opportunities for self-growth and insight.22 Throughout human evolution, these faculties were activated at key times when risk and the immediate demands of the natural elements were present. Modern life does not offer the same experiences as readily. Instead, a child’s nervous system is constantly responding to abstract demands like maintaining peer relations, familial conflict, school expectations, news of environmental and social degradation, and other external stressors that can lead to chronic stress responses and subsequent mental and physical health ailments.
Navigating immediate perceived risk necessitates present-moment awareness and helps to shift people into the here and now, activating their senses and developing their skills to interact with the environment in a more nuanced way. Further, once the stressor has been successfully navigated, there is an opportunity to shift from sympathetic arousal to highly restorative and restful parasympathetic states. For example, when children are given the opportunity to cross a creek on wet and wobbly stones, there is often an apprehensive moment of pause just before embarking. They almost intuitively gather themselves and start interacting with their environment on a moment-to-moment basis. Knowing the consequences of slipping are real, they are no longer thinking about things in the past or future but instead are highly focused on the task at hand. Once within reach of the end, they often take a small leap to finish the traverse, followed by a smile and obvious vitality affects. The negotiation of embarking over the creek also involves the practice of risk-assessment, a very important life skill for children to develop. It is essential that we support clients in determining what activity lies within their challenge zone (see chapter 5), and is thus a reasonable risk to take, and equally what lies in their danger zone and sets them up for emotional or physical injury. Some questions they might ponder are how stable are the stones, how slippery are they, how deep is the water, is there a current, what will it be like if I fall. In contemplating these, they develop the capacity to pause before beginning and make an assessment of self and the environment.
In the therapeutic context, risky play happens within a supportive and attuned relationship—as opposed to a child just taking risks on their own, or worse, among an influential peer group.23 The major benefit of having a caring and attentive adult with whom to share the mutual exploration of nature and risk is the process of collaborative problem-solving and co-regulation throughout the activity. While allowing their child to climb a tree, parents often fall into the trap of focusing on “be careful” messages that may undermine the child’s intuition or confidence and suggest the construct of “child as vulnerable” versus “child as resilient and capable of learning.” From a neurobiological perspective, risky play activates the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system (i.e., fight or flight) in combination with the social engagement system. Thus, risky play provides the opportunity to practice maintaining social connection while exploring the edges of “fear through small doses of sympathetic arousal.”24 Tree climbing in the context of a therapy session, for example, allows for the counselor to engage in a process of amplifying the present-moment experience of climbing the tree, helping to bring awareness to the child’s emotions, cognitions, and decision-making processes and mirroring their process as they navigate the challenges the tree offers. The therapist may also join the child or family in the tree, navigating the risk together in a way that helps the child develop stronger awareness of choices, boundaries, trust, and positive self-talk.
Such risky play is profoundly relational and can assist in the development of social skills such as empathy and compassion.25 Therapist, parents, and children become highly tuned into each other by necessity to ensure the safety and success of the activity. When facilitating outdoor risky play, knowing your clients and tracking their progress/ state is essential for success. Further, risky play, like other forms of play, involves the constant regulation of the limbic system by the neocortex.26 Consider “talking down your fear” when trying to descend from a steep slope: one has to stay engaged in the present moment and access higher-order coping skills to prevent the body’s alarm system from taking over and freezing. Child psychologist Daniel Siegel suggests to parents that when children are struggling and become flooded by emotion, it is best to first connect and then redirect. As counselors, we take the same approach when helping someone regulate themselves during a challenging moment. We acknowledge the tension, the fear, and uncertainty, and then attempt to cue their internal coping skills and highlight strengths. Engaging children in supported risky play allows for rich opportunities to practice and ultimately foster this “whole-brain approach” in our clients.
Helping clients to remain regulated and follow boundaries during risky play has proven to be a powerful experience in our practice, especially during activities such as fire-making, bushcraft tool use, and climbing. We have found that natural consequences associated with the risk are invaluable teachers. For example, we require that children learn and demonstrate safe knife practices before they are able to carve on their own. We call this the sharps test. It includes the skill of self-reflection by identifying if they are in a calm state prior to starting, learning how to use the tool responsibly, monitoring who is in their proximal space, and following these boundaries throughout the activity. Despite our attempts to prevent injury, inevitably there may be occurrences where the boundaries are pushed and small cuts result. The immediacy of the boundary transgression and the resulting consequence is a powerful teacher, clear and unambiguous feedback. The reality of the natural consequence supports future adherence to the boundary, not because they have been instructed to do so but because they know it’s necessary in order to prevent injury. Further, when offering risky activities to clients, we clearly explain the limits regarding what is permissible to engage in during the activity. Clients know that they are being given the opportunity to participate in this exciting activity so long as they respect and adhere to these guidelines. The result is an increase in focused attention and a level of compliance that often surprises parents who are accustomed to witnessing their children in resistant and oppositional stances.
A 10-year-old boy, Cody, was struggling with self-regulation and mounting conflict with his parents, especially when they enforced limits. As a result, many of his privileges had been taken away, and trust was seriously eroded. Cody was highly reticent about starting counseling, because it felt more like a punishment than an opportunity to help shift this negative pattern. After a couple of sessions to build trust and familiarity with the nature-based approach, and for the clinician to gauge his readiness for risky play, he was offered the chance to work with flint and steel (natural tools for creating sparks) to light a fire. Immediately, there was a level of engagement not seen before in the interactions. Further, to the surprise of his parents, he exhibited attentive listening and adherence to the boundaries laid out for the activity’s success and safety. Cody was open to feedback, as the activity was challenging enough that without guidance he would not succeed. As he worked on this task, the counselor provided immediate reflections and observations, allowing Cody to regulate his mounting frustration as he attempted to create a spark to ignite the charcloth (pre-burned cotton material that a spark will ignite). Further, the experience aided the family in remembering that Cody was capable of being responsible and collaborative and following expectations. The fire was lit, and care was taken to ensure that everyone, including the environment, was not at risk from the flame. Cody left the session with a sense of excitement, relief from the bombardment of negativity he had been immersed in, and a successful experience of navigating boundaries and adhering to limits.
Developing knowledge about hazards and the subsequent skills to navigate one’s environment are key rationales for risky play in nature-based therapy. Being exposed to discomfort and challenging situations that can be overcome is essential to learning how to bounce back and have the confidence to do so. Nature is filled with examples of this resiliency (e.g., a tree that survives a windstorm often develops stronger root systems). Opportunities to learn and grow from our mistakes are becoming less available, as demonstrated by athletic events where medals are given to every participant and the tendency for parents to step in to solve their children’s academic or social problems. “Helicopter parenting” may be perceived as creating more safety for our children and stronger attachment bonds, but it may also lead to heightened overall child anxiety and inability to cope with failure and mistakes on their own. Resiliency researcher and professor Michael Ungar has suggested that young children have been “bubble wrapped” and that their conditions for development in the risk-society are “too safe for their own good.”27 In nature-based therapy, we have the opportunity to work experientially with this concept by taking small risks, exposing kids to uncertainty or suspense, giving them chances to fail, and developing new approaches for success.
A favorite game for many of our clients is called Sneaker and may serve as an instructive example. It taps into the natural passions of children to hide and sneak in the forest, presenting a simple challenge with multiple opportunities for learning from mistakes, and ultimately building to success. One person acts as the prey animal and closes their eyes, while the other players act as predators who are trying to sneak up on the prey in short increments. If the predator is heard by the prey, then they have to move back to the start and sneak up again. This game can be played in treed areas or in rocky/hilly areas with varying levels of ground and bushes to hide behind. In this simple and exciting game, the risks involve traveling quickly over uneven and unpredictable terrain, and jumping behind natural barriers, with the potential to bump, slip, and trip along the way. The possibility of getting caught elicits excitement as well as that element of uncertainty or nervousness we aim to engage. Discomfort may occur from their hiding position or from the need to be quiet and still. (This hiding moment also provides the chance for kids to get up close with nature, smelling the bark, noticing the details of moss on the rock, etc.) Yet, even with this risk, uncertainty, and discomfort, the kids are generally keen and determined to reach their goal and catch the prey. Most often the children, and participating parents, are heard by the prey at some point and generally have to start over several times, providing the opportunity to work with feelings of disappointment and frustration. Ultimately, children learn to adjust their strategy to make a more successful approach, and when they finally tag that prey (could even be the therapist), they feel pride and success. A reflective conversation follows the game to explore the strategies learned, examine what worked or did not work, and amplify the qualities in the child that led to success (e.g., determination, focus, intention, planning, stillness, courage).
An 11-year-old girl, Laura, was referred to us for severe anxiety leading to school avoidance, having already missed more than forty days of middle school. She had previously been successful academically and in extracurricular activities but was having social difficulties that were causing her stress. Office-based visits with a psychologist had not made any progress because Laura refused to speak to the clinician, sitting silent through several sessions. When meeting with one of us for the first time in a local forested park, she also initially refused to speak. After some introductions, and learning more about her current situation, we suggested playing Sneaker (described above). Laura immediately became more animated and expressed interest in playing the game alongside her father. They both got caught on their first few approaches, but ultimately Laura demonstrated great skill and persistence in making her sneaky approach on the prey (therapist). After experiencing her first success, she began to engage more openly, respond to questions, and was willing to discuss her struggle with anxiety. They played a few more times, and the prey became replaced with the concept of “school” that Laura now had to sneak up on. Through this game, we were able to amplify some of her strengths (courage, determination, and planning) and explore how she could apply them to the challenge of going into the classroom. After this session, Laura expressed willingness to attend further counseling and to begin exploring coping skills that would help her return to school. This form of outdoor risky play was able to build connection and pathways for communication that may have been unlikely to emerge in an office setting.
This chapter focused on outdoor risky play and distinct yet connected rationales for its clinical applications: self-regulation, setting and maintaining boundaries, and self-efficacy. While our propositions are primarily directed at practitioners and therapists with access to natural environments, we believe that a nature-based approach utilizing risk could be incorporated into early years, youth work, social work, education, and other helping and healing milieus.
We acknowledge that working in nature is not for every practitioner, nor is the concept and engagement with risk. We find the natural environment ideal for activities, sessions, and interventions that can easily be modified to increase risk in our clients’ perceptions. The meaningful integration of environmental conditions and activity choices creates the milieu. Comfort with changing weather conditions, spending time in a forest, and getting dirty, wet, or cold are all a part of the work for us but may not be for all. We accept and adapt to the conditions that nature offers us. We encourage therapeutic practitioners desiring to use nature-based approaches to train in outdoor education and develop skills to facilitate experiential activities in nature. We must practice ethically and within the scope or mandate of our employment, competencies, and qualifications, especially in the context of risk; we do not support practice that otherwise ignores these necessary skills, abilities, and knowledge. Last, we stand by our conviction that play, and specifically outdoor risky play, holds significant and meaningful opportunities for many families to address issues and move toward healthier relationships and capacities.