ROUGH & TUMBLE
Not too long ago I watched two young cats playing in the garden. One of them would climb on to a plant pot and then in haphazard and treacherous way spring upon its opponent. They would then roll about in the grass for a while pawing and biting at each other. Each bite, however, was a gentle one, a quick nip to the back of the neck, and each launch from the plant pot, which was often inaccurately targeted, was just as playful.
Like the young of many species, human children also seem to be driven to engage in such activity. Children will often launch themselves into spontaneous play fighting, much to the worry of supervising adults, but this type of behaviour is highly important to children's physical, social and inter-personal development.
As with other species, human children need to test themselves physically and socially in order to survive, in particular the rough and tumble activity of males will often involve a form of fighting which is as much about testing muscle strength and dexterity as it is about social status.
Yet play fighting is so quickly treated with zero tolerance and often banned from many playwork environments governed by adults.
The assumption often made is that this type of behaviour may lead to an enhanced aggressiveness in those who are allowed to continue playing in this way. There is little or no conclusive evidence that such a relationship between aggressive behaviour and play fighting actually exists, however. The other underlying concern that many adults have is the 'what if?' factor. What if they get hurt? What if the parents do not like this type of play behaviour? What about litigation issues? Therefore risk-taking, something I look at later in this article with deep play, also plays a part in rough and tumble forms of play.
Rough and tumble play seems to have a competitive or combative element, whereby each touch or physical action may have a response which is slightly harder, firmer or accentuates the previous one. Take the game of tag for example. It often begins with the 'tagger' just having to slightly touch a fleeing opponent to get them out, but in the many observations I have made of this and similar games, especially where the 'runners' become over-confident, the tagger is not satisfied until he or she has the runner in a grip. In this type of play, an inter-personal learning is taking place, a learning of when, how and where it is appropriate to touch another person's body, something observed more commonly in mixed sex groups.
Perhaps one of the most common, yet strangest, rough and tumble behaviours is tickling. Tickling makes us laugh, squirm, or even squeal with joy, yet many of us try to conceal our ticklishness from others when asked if we are ticklish. How something can give pleasure to so many, yet have us cowering in a corner to avoid it, is quite simply bizarre. I remember a young girl who appeared to hate having her feet tickled and would run and hide if she thought they were at risk, yet at the same time she would taunt potential ticklers by waving her feet before them.
I have no idea whether being ticklish has an evolutionary purpose as far as human development goes, but it does tend to make us laugh and smile and therefore brings an element of instant happiness, much of which is conditional on releasing certain 'feel-good' chemicals in the body, and must be good if not therapeutic.
Rough and tumble play is a challenging play type as far as provision goes.
Playworkers need to ensure it can take place for many of the reasons already mentioned, but they need to do so in a relatively safe environment.
It would be unreasonable not to let children play 'pile up' for example, but it would also be unreasonable to let them do so on a concrete surface.
The basis for any intervention in this play type is mainly one of safety, and ensuring that there are suitable impact-absorbent surfaces such as grass, soft play areas, gym mats etc, is the main priority.
DEEP PLAY
As a child I recall a potentially dangerous activity that my friends and I engaged in many times. We would stand at a roadside and when we saw a car approaching one of us would hurriedly walk across the road backward pretending to unwind a reel of cable. The idea was to trick the driver into thinking we were really unwinding a cable so they would slow down, by which point we would have scampered in all directions. On reflection, this activity may seem irresponsible, but at the time it was fun and exhilarating and the fact is that children do, despite our attempts to treat them like an endangered species, engage in risky play.
Deep play is something that all children engage in at some level, whether it involves climbing to the top of a very tall tree, running across garage roofs, flinging themselves on a rope swing overhanging a strong river, riding go-karts with suspect brakes down a steep hill, or as a friend once found himself, sliding down a snow-covered hill on a bin bag only to narrowly miss a barbed-wire fence at the bottom and end up head first in a bog. Children seek out thrilling opportunities as part of their play and through such activity they learn how to gauge risks or even potentially life-threatening situations. However, as Hughes reminds us, the intention may be to risk death, not to actually die.
Of course deep or risky play may not just involve some of the physically extreme situations I have noted above, but may also include socially risky behaviour. For example, during socially charged play children may risk being chastised by an adult for rudeness. In these circumstances children may either forget themselves and whom they are playing with, or step beyond the usual adult/child boundaries to see how far they can push an adult's tolerance of certain risky behaviours. It is often about exploring the social and inter-personal relationships.
In circumstances of social conflict the playworker has to be sensitive to the context of the play. For example, I was invited to play a chase game with some children who wanted me to be a monster. After about half an hour I got bored and attempted to add some excitement of my own to the plot. Of course the children retaliated, and some with great anger which they expressed verbally.
Despite their behaviour pushing certain boundaries, however, I realised I was in the wrong here and could only expect them to challenge me and not be chastised for doing so. The play belonged to them and I was attempting to alter its direction for the benefit of my own interest.
BALANCING ACT
The real challenge for playworkers is balancing the need for safety against the need for children to explore risks. It is not an easy task by any means, but it is worth considering the kinds of activities adults engage in without constraint, such as bungee jumping, sky diving, motor racing, mountain climbing, snow boarding, or even drug taking.
All have a potential to cause death, and it is for this reason people enjoy them, for the rush. Likewise, children also need to explore their own levels of risk taking, but in safe environments with qualified first aid personnel at hand should accidents arise. If we do not enable children to take risks, then they will seek them out when adults are not around, which may mean more deaths on railway lines, roads, rivers and electric pylons.
If we do not want to raise 'battery' children, their only environment being a bedroom, then we need to deconstruct the safety culture we have created in recent years, from the face-to-face playworker supporting children's risk taking, to the OfSTED inspector working to regimental safety standards, from media spin, to insurance underwriters; the entire culture needs to encompass the importance of risk in children's play and worry less about litigation. Without action or an attempt to address these issues we are forcing children into a cotton-wool overcoat, which they may find impossible to escape in later life.
Philip Waters is a researcher and lecturer in playwork based in Cornwall
Further reading
* Hughes, B (2002) A Playworker's Taxonomy of Play Types, 2nd edn. London: PLAYLINK.
* Holland, P (2003) We don't play with guns here: war, weapon and superhero play in the early years. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
* PLAYLINK/Portsmouth City Council (1999) Reared in Captivity: restoring the freedom to play. London: PLAYLINK.
