So then that leads me back to the Wisconsin school and their rule for not going up a slide. And it was based on a horror story. I’m s- I’m sorry. Th- three horror stories in one podcast?
Hi, this is Rusty Keeler, and you’re listening to the Play Nature podcast where we talk about play, nature, playing in nature, and the nature of play. I’m glad you’re here. Let’s have a listen
Hey. Hello there. Welcome. I’m so glad that you can join me here today. And I must say, this is a solo, this is a solo episode, and typically with my solo episodes, you know I go to the creek, Six Mile Creek here in Ithaca, New York. And I went there today and it was raining. But you know, that doesn’t stop me, right?
No. We’re gonna be- we’re gonna sit by the creek together. So of course, you know, and with the idea of no bad weather, just bad clothing, I donned my, all my good rain gear, including the, the fancy r- rain pants that I got in Scotland that they give you free with this tour of the preschool. So if, if you wanna join us on the, you know, next year’s March visit to the Scottish outdoor preschool on the bus tour, you’ll come home with these great rain pants.
So I was wearing these great rain pants and my rain suit and some good boots. Had an umbrella and some tarps and everything, so I was all set. Find a good place by the creek, get everything all set up. Yeah. Right. Getting ready. And then I was having some technical difficulties with my wiring for my, for my headset into my phone, adapters and all that jazz.
I tried, but here I am in my office But we can, we can still get on Earth speed because I’m looking out my windows here. There’s pine trees, and there’s raindrops on the ends of each needle of the pine tree. And so it’s like a little, a little crystalline jewel bubble at the end of these needles. And then there’s some deciduous dogwood trees with very different kinds of leaves that are still hanging on here in August, but they’re getting ready to go soon enough.
Things in Ithaca are shifting. One of the first signs of the next season in Ithaca is when the college students return. And sure enough, they’re here, and their parents, it’s like drop-off time, so traffic is crazy. We have all these one-way streets and, you know, it’s a little tricky if you don’t know it. So that’s kind of interesting too.
So that’s, that’s, you know, like the, the geese flying south for the season. Here we have all the, the college kids coming north here to Ithaca. But okay, so we can, we can get on Earth speed a little bit here, uh, and then we can get into today’s topic, which is everybody’s favorite topic, kids going up the slide.
Dum, dum, dum. Yes. Do you let your kids go up the slide, climb up a slide? I let my kids do it, you know, but we might be different than, than the average person there. You know, as, as a designer, I think that is a great, a great thing for children to do. You know, it’s, it’s challenging, and you gotta use your body in different ways and different muscles in different ways.
And, you know, it’s, it’s got a good challenge. But if you, if you fall, you just, ah, just slide down to the beginning and, and give it another try So I’ve always been a big fan of the slide as going up. In fact, as a designer, you could almost design something that was like that. Like that’s okay, that could be an exit to the, the structure, but it’s also an entrance.
It’s a great entrance. There’s worse ways to get up to a, an elevated platform on a piece of playground equipment. But it is controversial. I have fun in some of my presentations and risky play roundtables, the workshops, and I’ll s- I’ll show a series of slides, and I’ll have people kind of raise their hand.
“Would you say yes to this? Would you say no to this?” And, you know, I start off easy, like, “Would you have sunflowers in your yard?” “Yes. Yes.” Then how about, “Would you let kids climb trees?” “Oh, well, maybe. It depends.” “Would you have a mud kitchen? Would you have a muddy mud kitchen?” I show chickens, and then I show fire.
Kids around a fire, and we have big discussions about that. But then I say, “And now,” while we’re still on the fire slide, “And now the most controversial picture of all,” boom, and then I show a kid going up a slide. It gets some chuckles, but then it usually starts a big conversation. Do you? Don’t you? What are the feelings?
And there’s, there’s often strong feelings both ways, saying yes and saying no. Now, I, I’m all for, like, the social etiquette of if somebody’s trying to come down a slide, you don’t climb up, right? You know, come on, give the right of way. Yield the right of way. Uh, but other than that, as far as a physical thing, I think it’s great.
But everyone’s got their feelings and opinions about it, and so it’s interesting when there’s a subject like that that pushes our buttons and that we have different feelings about it, even within the same school or childcare center or even within the same classroom with teachers and co-teachers. How do they feel about it?
It might be completely different. And is it a rule? Is it not a rule? Do people think it’s a rule? Was it a rule when you got there where you work, or do people think it’s a rule? Was it invented– Was it a rule that was invented by somebody that doesn’t even work there anymore and you’ve just been handed down?
You know, I always think that now is always a good time to rethink rules, and going up a slide is one of those. First of all, is it a rule? Is it not a rule? And then if it is a rule to not go up a slide, well, why? Okay, what’s, what’s the reasoning? And then– and talk it out And I think that’s the big thing when, when there’s lots of different opinions, the best thing we can do is talk it out.
Yeah. Hear other people’s feelings, reasons, you know, what are they bringing to it? ‘Cause we’re all, we’re all bringing different things to it. And so I had a great experience this spring where I, I was doing an all-day professional development workshop with a great center outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and two different centers, all, you know, they’re…
It’s all one, one group, but there’s two different sites. And we all got together and we did various things and talked about risk and nature and loose parts, and we went outside and did fairy hut building and, you know, kinda connected to the earth in that way. But one of the most powerful things we did w- were two risky play roundtables where we got, you know, each time half the teachers all sitting in a big circle, and we just went around and we…
I kind of facilitated a conversation. And again, we hear, you know, everybody has a different relation to risk. Everybody has a different feeling towards it. Everybody has different backgrounds of their own childhood and how they played, or the risks that they wanted to take, or the risks they were allowed to take, and so it was interesting.
And of course then the going up the slide story came up, the topic, and I could tell right away it was controversial. I almost felt bad when I brought it up, uh, ’cause I brought it up in both of them. And we were all having a good time, and then the slide subject came up, and I could see people’s faces dropped, and there were definitely strong opinions.
And it was interesting because it turned out it was a rule, and I’m gonna get back to this, you know, a little later. I’m gonna save it, save it for the end here. But it was a rule, but it was a rule that not everybody knew about. So some people were steadfastly not letting the kids go up slides, and then other people didn’t know the rule, and they were having grand old times letting the kids go up the slides.
And we heard these beautiful stories of like, uh, rites of passage, of like climbing the slide and getting to the top. And one, one of the playground pieces even had like a, a tube slide, and so this one teacher told the story of this girl working so hard, a four-year-old, to get up the slide, like using their arms on the top of the tube and the feet at the bottom, and scoot, scoot, scooting, and gripping and gripping and pushing.
And then she gets to the top, and she was so happy, elated, “I did it. I did it.” And then everybody was cheering and, and feeling good But then the other, the, the other people that, you know, have to follow, think they follow the rule, then they, of course, they felt kind of bad about it, but they don’t let it, and it might not be their, how they feel about it.
But it was a conversation that is really important because again, we’re, we’re all coming to this stuff, especially with risky play, at different places. And some people, you know, uh, we often talk about with risky play of like, “Well, what’s the worst thing that could happen?” Like, okay, we’re imagining bad things, whether it’s going up a slide or, you know, having stumps on the playground or loose parts or mud or, you know, that kind of stuff.
What’s, what’s the bad thing that could happen? And, oh, then we try to keep our own fears in, in, in check. Like, “Oh, God, I’m thinking about bad things. They’re on the trikes, they’re going fast, and I’m, I’m imagining all these bad things,” and, you know, “Okay, I gotta take deep breaths. Okay, don’t let my fears take over.”
You know, we try to, like, talk ourselves down and be in the present moment, be mindful, ready to step in if we have to, but also trying to, like, put it in perspective. And yet, some people’s perspectives may be very colored by their life experience, right? So maybe somebody letting kids do all this stuff that never had anything bad happen.
Net to their kids, grandkids, neighborhood kids are growing up, everything went fine, and okay, you know, we survived. You know, you hear that when people talk about their childhoods. But for other people, m- they coulda had, they coulda had bad things happen or challenging things or injuries and that kind of stuff For example, I was doing a risky play roundtable in Morgantown, West Virginia a couple years ago, and, you know, often, you know, people are kinda like, “Yay, w- we want risk, and w- we, you know, we wanna learn how to support risk,” and all this.
But there was one woman, very vocal, who was very against it, very, very against all forms of children taking risks. Okay. I, I, I’ve, I’m, I’m all for all the conversation, right? I, I’m not trying to steer anything. And, and that’s what I love about the, kinda these facilitated conversations, is that we’re just, I wanna hear from everybody, and we wanna talk it all out, and, you know, we don’t even have to come to any agreements.
And so this woman who was very against it, well, as we started, I asked some more questions about, okay, why, and her background. Turns out before she was an early childhood educator and caregiver, she was a nurse in the emergency room of a children’s hospital. So sh- she saw a lot of injuries. And so when you start to think about that, like, really, for her working in the emergency room, 100% of the children she saw come in had had an accident, had had something bad happen to them.
They slipped, they got injured, they got poked, they got broken arms, they got broken legs, you know, everything. So of course her mind is, that’s what she’s picturing, and it’s not even her imagination, like she really saw it. And so 100% of, of the kids had these bad things happen to them Now, that’s not 100% of the children in Morgantown, West Virginia.
That’s still a small percentage, right? Think about that. When something bad happens to a, a child somewhere, it’s horrible, terrible. We don’t want anything bad to happen to any child. But even if something does happen, it doesn’t mean that it’s happening to everybody, right? Even in the United States, there’s 70 million children.
And so something could happen. You could fall and break your leg, but that doesn’t mean that, you know, we have to stop letting kids play tag, right? Elementary schools, and there was a tag game, and somebody fell, and they broke their leg. So for a solution, they said, “We’re gonna do away with tag.” You know, maybe we’ve even heard about stories where they…
You can’t run. And so I, you know, I always say like, “Well, okay, that is a solution, but is that the best solution?” You know, we’re all smart people. We can, we can think of good solutions. Uh, yeah, but sometimes, you know, there’s knee-jerk reactions in the first administration, and they don’t wanna have to deal with, you know, well, parents, you know, parents that are upset about injuries or let alone insurance or, you know, if there’s licensing or if there’s health, health and safety people and, you know, that’s a lot to deal with, right?
All this risky stuff is, is complex when you start to talk it all out. So, so this woman who- with the emergency room, you know, she’s not gonna be for risk. So h-how– what if you, what if you were co-teacher with her, and you believe in risk? You’d have to talk it all out. Okay, so that’s, that’s one of the horror stories.
She had lots of horror stories. At this place in Wisconsin, a part of a conversation, you know, we turn– it turned to sticks. And, you know, a lot with sticks, it’s like, “Ah, you’ll, you’ll poke your eye out.” You know, there’s the fear of, “You’ll poke your eye out. You’ll get scratched. You’ll get poked. You’ll cut yourself.”
And then there’s the, you know, the educator being like, “No, no, that’s my imagination,” or, you know, “We’re, we’re– and we talk to our kids about keeping space and watching other people’s bodies,” or, uh, “If you don’t– if you’re not the one with the stick, you watch out for people with sticks, and you s- you know, the right space and, you know, okay, nothing, you know, something bad could happen, but chances are it’s not.”
And then one teacher spoke up and she said, “Well, you know, I have a hard time with sticks, and I’m trying to get better at it. I know that, I know most likely nothing bad can happen, but when I was a kid, my cousin poked his eye out.” And she says, she– Everyone’s looking at her, and she looks at us all and she says, “Literally.”
W- we were in the woods, he poked his eye out, and we had to carry it home Oh. Ooh. You. Sorry, I should’ve had a disclaimer at the beginning of this podcast. And somebody asked, “Well, did you, did you put it in milk?” I don’t, uh, uh, you know, again, it’s getting more and more graphic. They, they thought that’s something you do.
I did a little research. You put, you put broken teeth in, in, in milk. You put disembodied eyeballs. You just treat them as gentle as possible. Try not to touch them too much. Anyway, my point is, uh, people have these experiences, right? Uh, and the, the very, very few, it happens to very, very few people, but it happens and it colors our experiences, and then it colors how we then, when we’re working with children, okay, how c- how could you wanna let kids play with sticks when you’ve had that in your consciousness, in your memory?
How do you manage that? And then do you talk it over, right? You talk it over with your teammates. You talk it over with your, with your school or your center. So then that leads me to, back to the Wisconsin school and their rule for not going up a slide, and it was based on a horror story. I’m so- I’m sorry.
The three horror stories in one podcast? Okay, so this was o- one of the assistant directors, and she made a steadfast rule, was like, “No climbing up a slide. No. No. No chance, no way, no how, never,” because she saw a freak accident, and she had to deal with it. She was the one dealing with it. And okay, what it was was one child was going up a slide, and another child was coming down, and it just hit in the wrong way, in the face, in the mouth, in the teeth, and knocked some teeth down.
And the way she described it is, “I saw teeth dangling, and I never wanna see teeth dangling again. And I had to talk to the parents, and I had to…” And of course, you feel for her, right? We don’t wanna see teeth dangling. We don’t have to talk to, we don’t wanna talk to parents about their beautiful child’s teeth dangling.
Whew. So she said never again, and okay, that makes sense. But then we had lots of conversations about it, and I know I’ve thought a lot about it since then. You know, uh, it’s like the, the running and playing tag. Okay, you, you, we could make a choice to say no, no tag or no running on the playground at elementary school.
But okay, maybe it saves kids breaking legs. Maybe But what does it limit? What kind of fun and learning and camaraderie does it cut out? When we say– when we do these blanket no rules. And so the same with that slide idea. Like, it’s totally understandable that, that you s- you picture that, and you can never not picture that.
But does that mean that it’s gonna happen to every child? No. And then as I thought a little deeper about it, I thought like, well, it’s not really the, it’s not the going up the slide. You know, to make that rule, it, it’s not really the fear of going up the slide. Like I talked about like, oh, actually how like great physically that is and challenging and interesting and, you know, using different parts of your body, and it’s problem-solving, right?
Like, like that’s actually a positive. It feels more like the worry is you don’t want collisions. So it made me wonder like, well, okay, in this case, like instead of having a rule of like no going up a slide, what if the rule was no going up a slide when somebody’s coming down the slide? And no going down the slide when someone’s coming up a slide.
Always learn. You know, that’s a good lesson in life in general. Like look both ways. Look both ways twice. Look both ways three times. Like always check. You know, when you’re at the top of the slide, alw-always check ’cause you never know. And when you’re at the bottom of the slide and you feel like going for it, check.
Check up top because you never know So, you know, that would be something that they could talk about, think about Like maybe they could rethink the rules and still want to prevent collisions, dangling teeth But they could do it not having a blanket, a blanket no, because that would have said no to that, the girl who had the triumph up the tube slide and what that meant for her acco- accomplishing, accomplishing something, doing something hard.
Because those are the things that you carry on as a early childhood kid. You carry that on as you learn and grow and you know, “Oh, I can do stuff. Oh, that’s hard. I can problem solve. I can, I can do anything.” And we don’t want, you know, as caregivers and educators and parents, we don’t wanna limit that.
That’s the kind of stuff we wanna support. So again, it’s as we think about, you know, how we’re saying yes and how we’re supporting play, how do we have the conversations? How do we talk it out? With non-judgment and empathy and, you know, and sympathy if somebody went through a horror story. And then how to like take deep breaths and take baby steps, you know, the dream big, start small, never stop.
You know, and, and for me, it’s like the when for people saying yes, climbing trees or having stumps or going up a slide, to me the yes, how you get to yes isn’t as important as just having a yes. You know, I’ve seen lots of centers and schools that have like kids climb trees, but they have different, you know, different ways that they found to say yes.
And maybe some schools like they put lots of wood chips down, treat it like play equipment. That helped them say yes. Other schools say, “Well, we’re not gonna let you, we’re not gonna help you up into the tree. You gotta be able to get in the tree yourself, and then you can climb in the tree because that shows that you’re able-bodied enough or you’re ready.”
Okay, that’s how they found their way to say yes. Other schools, they I’ve seen it where they tape colored, you know, tape around certain heights, you know, of the branches. Like, okay, this is And I’ve seen it color-coded where like the k- the preschoolers can go up to the blue tape, and the kindergartens can go to the red tape, and the, you know, the third graders can go to the yellow tape Okay.
That’s how they found a way to say yes But you can imagine that those, you know, those ideas, those ways to f- say yes, came about through conversation, thinking, talking respectfully, both to honor the adult who has to be there and how they feel about things and think about things and their past experiences, and also wanting to support as much play and learning and growth and exploration and discovery and challenge as possible.
So talking about it, talking about That leads me into the thing that I am super excited and I want to invite you to, to talk about, to be in a group with me, a community of people who care about all this kind of stuff, nature play, risky play, loose parts, willow huts, tree climbing, chickens, gardens, the whole thing.
I am forming a community called the Nature Play Academy of people just like you and people just like me, the most excited nature play people in the world who love this stuff and have ideas and lots of questions, and some people that might feel alone, and other people that are talking about this every day, people that feel like they, they believe this stuff, but they, they don’t know where to turn.
You can turn to us, dear listener, in the Nature Play Academy. It’s gonna be an online community of all these great people and we’re gonna meet monthly and I am going to provide fun content on all sorts of great nature play subjects, especially ones that the community says they wanna talk about and learn about and grow in.
And then so I’ll provide content, slideshows, films, pictures, travels all over the world. I got a million pictures I wanna show. And then I’ll facilitate a conversation, kinda like these risky play roundtables, and people can ask questions so you can bring your own subjects to the conversation. You can ask yourse- you know, the group, the wisdom, get the wisdom of the group about letting kids go up slides, or how do you have gardens, or what kind of greenhouse can we get, or how do you talk to licensing about going up slides, or how do you talk to parents about now y- we- we’re letting our kids, the kids go up trees, climb trees?
Talk about it all, you know, together. Because I feel like we can make a change, you know. As things get technologically faster and faster and faster, we can come together and slow things down because we believe in children having, you know, connections to ear- Earth and connections to nature and connections to the seasons.
And we, we have that in our bones and in our guts and in our heart and, and we believe that, but sometimes it takes like knowing that we’re not alone, that we’re together, and we can believe it together, and we can be on a journey of learning and growing together. So I’m super excited about this. I have links in the show notes if you wanna get on the wait list for this starting this fall, and it’s gonna be a membership, a low, low price for founding members.
If you’d like to be a founding member with me, $20 a month, just 20 US bucks, and you can get two months free if you do the whole year, and I would love to have you a part of it. Um, we’ll also, we’ll also play monthly What Would Rusty Say About My Yard? So you can send me pictures of your outdoor space. You can, you can schedule one-on-one time with me.
I’ll have a few slots every month, and we can talk about anything And there’s tons of resources and I have a fun film library that I’ve been putting together for like 10 years of all these great nature play related little short films and, and I’m going to put together talking points that you can, if you want to talk to licensing or parents or co-staff or your administrator, if you want to talk to them about why it’s important to take risks, kids to take risks and go up slides.
I’m going to, every, every month I’ll have talking points. Every month I’ll have research on whatever the topic of the month is. Every month I’ll have play prompts for you of ways to observe the play that’s going on and observing yourself and your reactions to the play that’s going on and little prompts of things that you can try to try to, you know, add more nature or say yes to something you’ve never said yes to before or trying some loose parts or tapping your community for loose parts or doing some build projects.
It’s gonna be for all levels, from beginner to seasoned pro to leaders who are changing the world. We’re all gonna get together, and you are invited, dear listener So there we have it. We wanna get together and have the conversations because we’re all at different places. And if you love this stuff, we wanna keep growing.
And for all the rules that we have or that we think are guiding our practice or our lives or our children’s lives, we have opportunities to talk about them. Yeah. So come, come to the community and we’ll talk about it. Meanwhile, will you let your child go up a slide or play with a stick? Hmm. Send me an email.
What are your thoughts on this horror story-filled podcast? We also had some triumphant stories, right? Some positive things. Food for thought
All right. Thanks for listening Do you have a comment or a question? Email me at playnaturepodcast@gmail.com. You know I like talking about this stuff, and maybe we could use your question on a future podcast episode. As always, I have some free goodies for you in the show notes, including my outdoor loose parts guide.
Fun stuff in there. And so I wish you the best in your outdoor play adventures. And when it comes to adding nature to your yard, or loose parts, or saying yes to risky play, my favorite motto is, “Dream big, start small, and never stop.” Oh, yeah. Woo, woo, woo, woo. Let’s do it. All right. Have fun out there
