Playing With Risk
- Harriet Leedham
- Dec 1, 2025
- 6 min read
The benefits of risk taking on child development
By Harriet Leedham | 1st December 2025
From the moment you entered into this world you were taking risks. Your first breath, your first steps, your first social interactions. Risk-taking is an integral part of human nature, fundamental to our survival and the enhancement of our life experience, and it is to this one key ingredient to which we owe every one of our successes.
In this blog post I explore the benefits of risk, and the dangers surrounding it that we have complete power to avoid, if only we can learn how.
The Benefits of Risk
When we approach any risky situation our internal computer immediately begins to weigh up the risk and whether or not we feel capable of managing it. Those of you who spend a lot of time working in practical or social situations are likely well-acquainted with the thrill of risk-assessment (don’t you roll your eyes at me). Okay, perhaps “thrill” is an exaggeration, but stick with me, risk assessment can be much more interesting, informative, and even inspiring, than we think.
In my first forays into creating risk assessments as a teacher, my misinterpretation of the task led me to avoid risk altogether for fear that any inconvenience or unexpected turn of events could, and would, be catastrophic. Teaching primary school students how to play the ukulele soon snapped me out of that mindset as sore fingers and blistered thumbs threatened to pack those pesky instruments away for good.
It turns out that weighing up the benefits of the activity in question and identifying the best ways to manage the risks, rather than avoid them, is an effective way to risk assess and a key skill that each of us require to achieve success. In fact, developing natural risk assessment in our children could be the most effective way to keep them safe in an increasingly challenging world where more and more dangers are cropping up all the time.
Exercising the Risk Assessment Muscle
Consider the last time you were faced with a challenge that required you to leave your comfort zone. I expect the first question that popped into your head was “what is the risk?” perhaps followed by “what is the benefit?” and then finally, “is it worth it?” Unfortunately, this can be where our comfort zone steps in and stops us before we’ve even started analysing how we can safely navigate the adventure ahead. When was the last time you turned down an exciting opportunity because you were too scared, too tired, or too busy?
Think of risk-assessment like a muscle. The more we use it, the more competent and confident we become. The more opportunities we have to weigh up risk versus benefit and find ways to achieve what we want, the better we will become at discerning risks worth taking, and the more likely we will be to overcome them.
The same can be said for our children. If our children are in the habit of recognising the natural consequences of their actions they are also learning how to be flexible in accommodating risk, developing resilience in the pursuit of challenging goals, and will be more likely to aim high. Ultimately, they will become competent in discerning and avoiding unnecessarily dangerous situations. Above all, risk-taking presents a highly important opportunity to safeguard our children, preparing them to stay safe even when we aren’t there to watch them.
The Danger of Avoiding Risk
In a society that offers fewer opportunities to safely spend time outdoors, we are all growing more risk-averse. In fear that the big bad outside world will pose any number of dangers to our children, we avoid opportunities to let them experience and learn from risks. Therefore, their competence in assessing and managing risk is low, and their confidence follows closely behind. It is no surprise that this downward trajectory of risk-taking opportunities is walking hand-in-hand with a declining overall mental health of the global population.
One thing I was very surprised to learn was that by removing children from the risk of outdoor activities, even in urban settings, hasn’t actually reduced the amount of dangers that children experience. In fact, if we are sheltering our children so much from risk that they don’t need to learn how to assess and manage it, they are considerably less equipped to deal with the unavoidable challenges life throws at them. By trying our hardest to keep them safe, we are inadvertently setting them up for failure.
Outdoor activities provide ample opportunity to take risks. These are the changes in terrain, obstacles to navigate, maps to follow, fitness levels to develop, and many more. Each time we overcome one of these risks, regardless of how big or small it is, our confidence grows, our competence grows, and our willingness to engage in future risk increases. We also gain, through experience, an understanding of what we are and are not capable of. We learn which types of risk we should pursue, and which ones we should avoid. Essentially, we learn how to keep ourselves safe.
If we provide our children with the freedom and opportunity to experience risk, they begin to develop risk competence. This increase in risk awareness and understanding of their own level of competence equips them with the tools needed to avoid unnecessary danger and learn to manage the risks that they want to take. Think about the critical thinking, self-reflection, and self-awareness that will grow under this type of opportunity, and consider how these will continue to develop and serve them in their endeavours throughout the rest of their lives. By encouraging risk competence, we facilitate independence.
Risky Play
One of the best ways to access risk is through play. I remember going through a phase of rolling down hills with my friends whenever we had the opportunity (just in case you had forgotten how wonderfully weird kids are), and I can still recall weighing up the angle of the slope, predicting the potential speed, and checking how comfortable the landing looked. Over time I learned to look out for big spiky rocks, clusters of thorny thistles, and lumps in the terrain from the experience of many uncomfortable rolls and unexpected catapults into the air.
Perhaps you feel a little bit sore just reading this anecdote, but the reality was that little me found this unusual activity so much fun that despite the hardships and challenges I faced, I kept doing it, and I learned how to change tact for a smooth and successful roll. The part I feel hesitant to admit is how I still catch myself, from time to time, analysing a slope for its rolling value, and pushing down the urge to test it.
Play is something that is a fundamental need of all children, a need that we don’t actually grow out of. I will take a deep dive into play in a future post, because there is SO much to talk about, but for the sake of staying on topic I’ll just say this:
If we facilitate opportunities for our children to engage in risky play, to test their limits, and to find their own way of tackling obstacles, they will learn skills that they could never learn elsewhere to the same effect. On the surface it may look and sound like chaos, it may make us feel uncomfortable, on edge, or even irritated, but beneath that there is a whole iceberg forming. This iceberg represents the self-awareness, confidence, analytical, and problem-solving skills, among many others that create the foundation for our children to navigate safely, successfully, and optimistically through life.
Conclusion
When we hear the word ‘risk’, we may instinctively perceive it as a negative thing. The term ‘risk-taking’ may initially conjure up images of life-threatening activities, and ‘risk-assessment’ probably just invokes a yawn. The reality is that risk, and everything associated with it, is so much more important and exciting. Risk may be an unforgiving teacher, but its lessons are the kind that stick with you for the rest of your life. Risk-taking is a fundamental human need, and risk-assessment is one of the greatest skills we can ever learn, and none of it has to be boring. It doesn’t even have to be scary. As you finish reading this blog post and go about the rest of your life, I challenge you to embrace risk, to welcome the lessons that it offers, and to reap the rewards of your success.
References
Eichstellar, G. and Holthoff, S. (n.d.) ‘Risk Competence: Towards a Pedagogic Conceptualisation of Risk’, ThemPra Social Pedagogy C.I.C, pp.1-11
Gray, P., Bjorklund, D., and Lancy, D. (2023) ‘Decline in independent activity as a cause of decline in children’s mental wellbeing: summary of the evidence’, The Journal of Pediatrics, 260, pp.1-14
Loebach, J., Cox, A., Ramsden, R., and Brussoni, M. (2023) ‘Running the risk: the social, behavioural and environmental associations with positive risk in children’s play activities in outdoor playspaces’, Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 26, pp.1-34