Are We Making Childhood Too Safe?

One of the most common phrases I hear from adults around children today is “be careful.”

Usually, it is said with good intentions. Sometimes it is said before a child has even encountered anything remotely dangerous. We warn children not to climb too high, not to run too fast, not to go too far, not to talk to strangers, not to take chances.

Of course, keeping children safe matters. Many of the improvements in child safety over recent decades have been hugely positive. Serious injuries and accidents have reduced significantly in many areas of childhood.

But I do think we need to ask ourselves an uncomfortable question:

At what point does protecting children from risk start preventing them from developing the skills needed to manage risk for themselves?

Because safety and healthy development are not always perfectly aligned.

As a child development specialist, I’ve become increasingly concerned that many children are growing up with fewer opportunities to test themselves physically, socially and emotionally. Not because adults don’t care, but because modern environments are increasingly designed to minimise uncertainty altogether.

The problem is that uncertainty is not simply something children need protecting from. It is also something they need practice navigating.

A child climbing a tree is not just developing physical coordination. They are making decisions. Assessing situations. Judging their own capabilities. Learning when to push forward and when to stop.

A child negotiating a disagreement in a playground is not just “messing about.” They are learning communication, emotional regulation and social resilience.

These experiences can feel uncomfortable for adults to watch precisely because they involve small amounts of risk, failure or conflict. But development often happens in those moments.

The Norwegian researcher Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter has spent years studying what she calls “risky play” - exciting and challenging play that involves uncertainty and managed risk. Her work suggests children are naturally drawn towards these experiences because they help develop confidence, judgement and coping skills.

Children rarely gain genuine confidence from environments where every outcome is predictable and every challenge has been removed. Confidence grows when children attempt something uncertain and discover they can cope.

This is where it is important to distinguish clearly between risk and hazard - two terms that are often wrongly treated as interchangeable.

A hazard is something that should be avoided and/or rectified - it is in no way desirable and can cause significant harm

Risk, on the other hand, is an observable challenge that children can learn to assess and navigate: climbing higher, balancing, moving at speed, jumping from a height or trying something that feels slightly beyond their comfort zone.

Hazards should absolutely be designed out.

Risk should not.

In fact, modern playground safety thinking increasingly recognises this distinction. Recent revisions to playground safety guidance and standards have moved away from the idea that all risk should be eliminated and instead acknowledge the developmental value of challenge and risk-taking in play.

The foreword to the European playground equipment standard EN 1176 explicitly recognises that play provision should balance safety with opportunities for challenge, stimulation and risk because these are essential parts of children’s development.  This change is to be welcomed. For years, many playgrounds became progressively more sanitised, often driven by fear of litigation or complaints rather than developmental evidence. Equipment became lower, flatter and more predictable. In some cases, spaces became technically compliant but developmentally uninteresting.

Children quickly lose interest in environments that offer no sense of progression, exploration or mastery.

The irony is that some of the safest-looking environments may not always be the healthiest developmentally.

Tim Gill has written extensively about the decline in children’s independent mobility and how risk aversion has reshaped childhood over recent decades. Many children today have far less freedom to explore their environments independently than previous generations did. Rethinking Childhood – Tim Gill

That matters because resilience is not an abstract trait children either possess or lack. It develops through experience.

The resilience researcher Michael Ungar argues that resilience is built when children experience manageable challenges within supportive environments and learn that they can navigate difficulties successfully.  In other words, resilience requires exposure to situations that are, at least occasionally, difficult.

Yet many children now spend much of their lives in highly supervised and carefully managed environments. Their movements are tracked. Their activities are organised. Their play is often structured by adults. Even minor conflicts are frequently resolved for them before they have a chance to work through them independently.

This shift has happened gradually, so we often fail to notice how different childhood has become.

But children need opportunities to stretch themselves appropriately, not simply spaces designed to eliminate all uncertainty. That’s where playgrounds come in.

Good playgrounds are rarely about a single piece of equipment. They are about creating environments where children can explore challenge incrementally and build confidence over time.

Importantly, this also means recognising that children experience challenge differently. A climbing structure that feels adventurous to one child may feel overwhelming to another. Inclusive design is not just about physical accessibility. It is about creating multiple ways for children to engage, progress and succeed.

What worries me most is that many adult decisions around children are now shaped more by fear of criticism than by developmental understanding.

A scraped knee is visible and immediate. A loss of confidence, independence or resilience is slower and harder to measure.

That imbalance affects policy, schools, public spaces and parenting culture more broadly and it’s having a negative impact on our children’s wellbeing.

If childhood becomes entirely focused on avoiding mistakes, discomfort and uncertainty, we risk raising children who are less prepared for the realities of adult life, not more.

Life involves uncertainty. Relationships involve risk. Independence requires judgement. Confidence requires experience.

Those capacities are not magically acquired at 18. They develop gradually throughout childhood through repeated opportunities to test limits, make decisions and recover from setbacks.

Of course children need protection.

But they also need the chance to discover what they are capable of.

And sometimes that starts with allowing them to climb slightly higher than we find comfortable.