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Why We Let Children Climb Up the Slide (Especially When Other Childern Are There)...

We’ve been led to believe that playground equipment, or slides rather, have one correct use: "up the stairs, down the slide." Orderly, predictable, and adult-approved. Yet when we insist on this one-way approach, we remove the very moments that build the skills children need most.

When children climb up while others want to come down, it becomes a lesson in frustration tolerance, problem-solving, resilience, communication, collaboration, cooperation, and decision-making. They learn to pause and wait (delayed gratification), negotiate, and consider others. These moments are the foundation of emotional intelligence.

Research from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child shows that self-regulation and executive function grow through experiences that require planning and adjustment. Peter Gray notes that when children navigate play on their own terms, they strengthen empathy and independence. Angela Hanscom connects full-body movement to focus and sensory integration, while Mariana Brussoni’s research on risky play shows that manageable risk helps children become more capable and careful.

And yes, sometimes children will get hurt. While we never want injury, it’s more concerning when children aren’t moving or testing limits at all. Skinned knees and small tumbles teach body awareness, balance, and recovery (while activating vestibular and proprioceptive development). We’ve become so afraid of falling that we stop children from running, forgetting that getting back up is how confidence is built. Preventing every scrape comes at the cost of deeper learning, courage, confidence, and trust in their own abilities.

Context always matters. Allowing children to climb up the slide doesn’t mean there are no rules. It means we shift how boundaries are taught (within play). Instead of enforcing them through constant correction, we let children experience and understand them through relevant and meaningful action.

When adults step back, children don’t lose boundaries, but rather, they begin to build them from within. They learn to move aside, wait, or communicate. Those are the beginnings of true self-regulation and respect for themselves and others. The goal isn’t blind obedience but awareness and accountability.

The playground is the perfect balance of freedom and safety. It’s where children can take risks, test ideas, and learn how to move within shared space under calm, present supervision. They discover what their bodies can do and how to exist alongside others doing the same.

Climbing up the slide doesn’t teach rule-breaking. It teaches discernment, confidence, and community. It shows that freedom and safety are not opposites but partners in growth.

Children have been climbing up slides since slides existed because they are wired to explore from every direction. The playground is where they practice challenge, coordination, and coexistence. When we stop interfering and start trusting, we give them what childhood is meant to offer: a safe place to move, negotiate, wonder, and grow. ❤

Join us this month for our FREE WEBINAR on how to better support resilience and frustration tolerance in our children. Register here: https://www.weskoolhouse.com/event-list

It sounds dramatic, but it's the plain & simple truth. PLEASE READ.

When we talk about the challenges we are seeing in early childhood, delays, sensory seeking or sensory avoidance, difficulty cooperating, regulation struggles, trouble following directions, weak frustration tolerance, limited focus, difficulty initiating and sustaining play, we have to be honest about what has changed.

Children are not playing the way they once did. Not in the volume, the depth, or the intensity their developing brains and bodies require.

In infancy, movement is increasingly contained. Walkers, bouncers, seats, swings, activity centers. A baby who should be rolling, pivoting, pushing, crawling, and coordinating both sides of the body is often propped and positioned. Those early months are when the sensory systems are wiring rapidly. The vestibular system, which supports balance and spatial orientation. The proprioceptive system, which gives the brain information about joint position, force, and body awareness. The tactile system, which shapes body boundaries and emotional security. These systems build the foundation for regulation, attention, motor planning, and executive function. When whole body movement is limited, that foundation is weaker.

Then toddlerhood arrives, and we increase expectations for sitting, waiting, table tasks, prolonged circle time. When toddlers do run, climb, or explore, they are often met with constant correction. Be careful. Too high. Not like that. You will fall. Go play over there. Use it this way. The child who has already had limited sensory freedom now has limited autonomy. Instead of expansive movement and experimentation, they receive redirection and containment.

By preschool, the expectations intensify. More structured days. More controlled behavior. Often more extracurriculars layered on top of already full schedules. All of this unfolds alongside a significant rise in screen exposure, which again keeps the body still and quiet while reducing real world sensory input.

We have slowly and systematically reduced authentic play. And whatever remains, we tend to manage and direct.

Children need to run, climb, jump, swing, roll, carry, push, pull, fall, and get back up. These experiences stimulate the brainstem and cerebellum, which are critical for balance, coordination, and automaticity. They strengthen neural pathways that later support focus, working memory, impulse control, and academic learning. Physical play is not separate from cognition. It is a prerequisite.

But children also need creative autonomy. They need to invent storylines, negotiate roles, build structures, solve problems that do not have predetermined answers, tolerate frustration, and try again. When adults constantly hover, correct, or script the experience, it may look like play, but it functions more like a controlled activity. True play requires ownership.

Extracurriculars have a place when children are developmentally ready and genuinely interested. But they cannot replace daily unstructured time. A child’s day is already heavily organized. Without protected space for free, child led exploration, there is almost no opportunity for the kind of deep play that wires flexibility, resilience, and independent thinking.

Across intelligent species, play is a biological drive. Rough and tumble play calibrates force and builds social awareness. Risky outdoor play strengthens motor planning and emotional regulation. Highly sensory play integrates the nervous system. These experiences refine the connections between lower brain structures and the prefrontal cortex, the area responsible for reasoning, decision making, and self control.

We have taken over childhood in ways that feel productive and protective, often with the best of intentions. But intention does not erase impact. When expectations do not align with development, children are labeled, shamed, diagnosed, and sometimes medicated for behaviors that are, in many cases, adaptive responses to environments that do not meet their biological needs.

Of course some children require intervention and targeted support. That is real. But there are also many preventable circumstances rooted in environment, not pathology.

If we do not speak to this with urgency, the cycle will continue. Play in early childhood cannot simply be valued in theory. It must be fiercely protected in practice.

Okay, we’re gonna let you in on a little secret…

While everyone is obsessing over fine motor skills, tracing, worksheets, and pencil grip… gross motor movement and heavy work are where so much of the real development is happening.

Of course fine motor skills matter. But development happens in sequence.

Before the hands can control a pencil well, the body first has to develop:
• Core stability
• Shoulder strength
• Bilateral coordination
• Postural control
• Body awareness
• Sensory integration

And that development happens through movement.

Lifting.
Pushing.
Pulling.
Dragging.
Climbing.
Digging.
Carrying.
Building.

Heavy work activates the proprioceptive system: one of the nervous system’s most powerful organizers for regulation, coordination, motor planning, attention, and spatial awareness.

But heavy work is not just a “pre-writing activity” or a stepping stone to academics.

The human body is biologically designed to move, resist force, carry weight, climb, push, pull, and engage with the physical world across the entire lifespan.

Children don’t outgrow this need. Adults don’t either.

Research consistently links movement and proprioceptive input to:
• Stronger emotional regulation
• Healthier nervous system function
• Improved executive functioning
• Better focus and attention
• Greater confidence and resilience
• Stronger cognitive performance and learning outcomes

Yet somehow we’ve normalized expecting children to sit still for long periods while minimizing the very systems the brain depends on to learn well.

The irony?
The path to healthier development, stronger learning, and even better handwriting often starts far away from the worksheet.

It starts with movement.

So stop obsessing over worksheets and start obsessing over: climbing, carrying, balancing, lifting, pushing, hauling, digging, jumping, dragging, rough-and-tumble play, obstacle courses, uneven terrain, and whole-body movement.

A generation ago children watched cartoons that moved slowly enough for their brains to process, predict and breathe between scenes. Classic shows averaged around 1,000 visual cuts per hour. Modern children's programming now exceeds 10,000. That is not just a stylistic difference. It is a neurological one that is quietly reshaping how young brains develop attention, patience and emotional regulation.

Every rapid cut on screen forces a child's brain to reset its attention. Done occasionally this builds responsiveness. Done 10,000 times per hour it trains the brain to expect constant stimulation and become intolerant of anything slower. The classroom. The dinner table. The pause between one thing and the next. Real life suddenly feels unbearably slow to a brain wired for hyperspeed content.

Research in pediatric neuroscience shows that slower paced media allows the prefrontal cortex to remain engaged rather than simply reacting. Children who consume slower content show stronger impulse control, longer attention spans and better emotional regulation than heavy consumers of fast-paced programming. The brain needs space to process what it just saw. Modern cartoons never give it that space.

Old cartoons weren't boring. They were giving developing brains exactly what they needed without anyone realizing it. Sometimes the upgrade is going back to what actually worked.

❤️ Everything in moderation ❤️

I love this quote so much (thank you, ) and find myself quoting it often!

Teaching kids to embrace every kind of weather is one of the greatest gifts we can give them.

Learning the fun of a rainy day helps kids grow resilient, adaptable, and open to finding beauty anywhere!

Who would want to say indoors when there are puddles to jump in, frosty mornings to admire, mud to squelch, and wind to blow our bad moods away?