Millions of years ago, our ancestors climbed and swung from trees. Today, at the playgrounds that dot our cities, we still do much the same.
And playground monkey bars shouldn’t go anywhere, experts at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College argue in an article published last month in “Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health.” That’s in spite of the roughly seven per cent of childhood arm fractures caused by them in the U.S.
The benefits from so-called “risky play,” which the researchers say may originate from our ape ancestors, are too large to discount. Kids playing on monkey bars or climbing a tree experience psychological and physical benefits, including better confidence, resilience and coping skills later in life.
“You don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater,” lead author Luke Fannin, a PhD candidate at Dartmouth, told the Star. “You want to make parents aware of the benefits, because we’re worried that we’re only seeing the costs all the time … Perhaps a broken arm is worth the long-term benefits.”
Indeed, the issue of risky play has become a hot-button issue in Toronto. In January, the city closed 45 tobogganing hills, citing hazards like trees and roads that made the hill unsafe. The decision generated backlash from locals and a city councillor — and started a conversation around the type of play that can lead to injuries.
The Canadian Paediatric Society even issued guidance encouraging unstructured — and risky — outdoor play. Children should be kept “as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible,” the society said. The recommendations were supported by Parachute Canada, a national charity focused on injury prevention.
And that’s because of the immense benefits that kids get, Fannin said.
“It seems to be relatively foundational for building kids’ confidence and resilience,” he explained. It also leads to being more active, and there may be a link between risky play and skeletal growth, he said.
Fannin and his co-authors — Dartmouth researchers Zaneta Thayer and Nathaniel Dominy — believe this is nothing new. They argue this behaviour goes back millions of years, finding its roots in our primate ancestors who swung from trees and, yes, sometimes fell from them, too. All great ape species show evidence of healed fractures, the researchers said.
Squint hard enough at a chimpanzee up in the trees and you’ll see the ancestor of the playground monkey bars.
“In chimpanzees, the age classes that climb the most are always the kids,” Fannin said. “So this is something that primates need to do and as advanced as we are as humans, all of us are also primates. So it would make sense that if you remove the ability to climb, it might affect kids.”
The lesson for parents, Fannin said, is to let your kid climb.
“We come from a climbing lineage,” he said. “The fact that your kids want to climb and swing is important … We need to find some sort of balance.”
With files from Francine Kopun.
