While it is our responsibility as adults to protect our children from hazards that would inflict injury, it is also our responsibility to provide children with a safe play environment providing challenging opportunities to explore, practice, and reach personal levels of competence. Children learn their own play abilities and limitations through…

Advocates of children's right to play are caught between the need to provide developmentally appropriate and challenging places for play and restrictions that result from fears of liability. It may be that implementation of the suggestions of research on playground safety has resulted in the creation of playgrounds that are colorful, cute, and…

The well-planned playground can serve as the common denominator for all children, with the resulting process of play as the natural avenue for knowing and understanding oneself and others. Guidelines are presented for considering the needs of children in general, as well as the needs of the physically-, visually-, and hearing-impaired, and the…

Those who design and develop playgrounds are caught between the desire to provide developmentally appropriate, challenging opportunities for play and the desire to restrict play challenges in order to reduce danger to children or the likelihood of being held liable for injuries. While there can be no argument against accident and injury…

For many children, societal changes have restricted the opportunities for and the right to play. Adults deal with these violations of children's right to play by trying to correct problems, preventing future problems, or by denying that problems can or could exist. In order to meet the challenge of preserving children's play rights, we need to be…