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“Welcome! Play Secure,” reads the signal at a Fairfax County Public College playground in Virginia, simply exterior of Washington, D.C. The signal additionally lists just a few easy guidelines—21 of them, by my depend.
First off, the playground ought to by no means be used when it’s frozen. Or moist.
There will be no climbing on issues like the security rails (that are mainly simply fences). Children should not put on any clothes with drawstrings, hoods, or toggles whereas they’re enjoying, as a result of this stuff may get caught on one thing. (Ponytails appear grandmothered in.)
On the slide, kids should “take turns,” “sit in an upright place,” and “not climb.” There additionally should be “no loitering at slide entry or exit.”
Loiter not, little ones!
![Playground sign](https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/q60/uploads/2023/08/playground-rules-sign-fairfax.png)
“That is actually a playground that is for 2- to 5-year-olds,” says Katie Courtney, a 32-year-old mother of 4 who introduced the signal to my consideration. The slide, she says, is “about as tall as an grownup.”
Nonetheless, when a baby will get as much as the highest of the slide, legally they have to hustle their butt proper down. This irks Courtney, who has a grasp’s diploma in schooling and used to show preschool.
“A part of the enjoyable of being on the playground is that for 3 seconds you are on the prime of the slide—you might have one second of being in cost,” she says.
And if one other child is true behind you?
“How laborious is it for a 4-year-old to barter, ‘You’ll want to transfer! You are blocking everybody else!’?” she wonders.
With out authorized counsel? That is loopy.
Nonetheless, the slide guidelines pale compared to the principles for the monkey bars and rings. Children should not allowed to take a seat or stroll on the monkey bars, nor can they “skip rings or rungs.”
Courtney finds this insupportable. If youngsters really feel able to skip a hoop or rung, she says, they need to be allowed to go for it.
“It provides them some confidence of their choice making,” she says. Power youngsters to comply with guidelines like that “and also you assume you are defending your 4-year-old from getting damage, then swiftly you might have a 17-year-old who does not know methods to decide.”
Enjoying on the swings can be strictly regulated. The foundations state there will be just one baby at a time, they have to “sit in an upright place,” and there’s to be no “twirling.” Can they soar off? No, after all not.
Fairfax County didn’t reply to a request for remark concerning the signal.
Tony Christopher, government director of the Nationwide Institute for Play, says that playgrounds publish these indicators in an effort to “mitigate the legal responsibility of the entity liable for the playground (college, municipality, and so forth.) within the occasion they’re sued.”
Boston School psychology professor Peter Grey, an skilled on free play and co-founder with me of Let Develop, has seen such indicators at a number of playgrounds.
“The one restriction that must be added to make them full is ‘No Enjoying,'” he says.
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