Policies To Let Kids Play

Kids don’t exercise enough, and spend too much time indoors and online. Parents may agree it takes a village, but too often there doesn’t seem to be much of a village, just people isolated in individual homes.

There’s no quick way to change this reality, but policymakers can and should seek to eliminate policies that discourage community and outdoor activities. Here are a few common-sense ideas that should be bipartisan winners.

A cute small girl wondering what to watch on a TV holding a TV remote sitting on a sofa in a big room with a bowl of cereal balls being alone at home. Childrens leisure activities

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1. Enact Liability Reforms to Make It Easier for Communities and Businesses to Have Playgrounds

Everyone wants playgrounds to be safe for kids to use. Facilities should ensure that slides are properly secured to the ground and equipment isn’t rusting. But playgrounds are meant for play, and falls are an inevitable part of kids’ lives. Injuries are unfortunate, but shouldn’t be legally actionable outside of cases of true neglect.

Unfortunately, in the United States, common sense often takes a back seat, and our litigation system is abused to turn personal injuries into financial windfalls. Liability insurance is not just prudent, but mandatory in many states, costing even small Home Owners Associations up to $1,000 a year in premiums.

Guidance from the U.S. Consumer and Safety Commission is mostly reasonable, like to include guardrails on high platforms and to keep equipment free of “protruding bolt ends.” But some other requirements present challenges. For example, playground operators are instructed to “Make sure surfaces around playground equipment have at least 12 inches of wood chips, mulch, sand, or pea gravel, or are mats made of safety-tested rubber or rubber-like materials.” They also must “Check playgrounds regularly to see that equipment and surfacing are in good condition,” and “carefully supervise children on playgrounds to make sure they’re safe.”

So what happens if a kid digs a hole in the 12-inch pile of wood chips underneath the playground in the outdoor area of my restaurant, and, an hour later, another child twists or even breaks an ankle? Did I fail to ensure the playground was in “good condition”? It’s impossible to know how our legal system would view such a situation, so it’s no wonder that many decide not to take on the risk and just not build the playground.

Germany’s legal system includes the term “allgemeines Lebensrisiko” or “normal life risk” in rejecting lawsuits. Playground operators can be held responsible for unsafe, unmaintained equipment—although damages tend to be much smaller than the United States—but courts reject culpability for injuries that happen as a part of normal playground use. How sensible.

That helps explain why European families can go to biergartens and other sit-down restaurants and be confident that there will be a play area for kids. While American families seeking play areas mostly get to choose between McDonald’s or Chick-fil-a, European parents can enjoy nice, sit-down meals, and even beer and wine while their kids play without them.

America needs to embrace this perspective, too. Of course, we want to prevent broken necks and rusty metal, but we should accept the risks associated with childhood and playground play, and be thankful–rather than litigious–for those who give kids the opportunity to play.

2. Making Playgrounds Fun Again

Fear of litigation not only explains the dearth of common play areas in the United States, but also contributes to why so much modern American playground equipment is also profoundly un-fun. Rounded plastic equipment prevents potential scraps and presumably is meant to prevent daredevil kids from climbing on top of slide tunnels or jungle gym towers. Certainly it’s safer, but prime playground-age kids seem to quickly sniff out that this is pretty much the same fare as offered in the baby and toddler section and lose interest.

European playgrounds are entirely different. The playground my children used in Vienna, Austria, had a zip line running through the center—and little kids and parents were expected to look both ways or risk getting knocked down. There are often giant wood structures and platforms, connected by monkey bars and rope bridges, all of which would be considered out-of-bounds under U.S. standard. My six-year-old daughter broke an arm falling from a set of monkey bars in Brussels, Belgium. It was a sad occasion, kicking off a summer season that meant she had to sit on the side of the pool, rather than jump in, but my daughter—like her parents—recognized that these things happen, especially when you are choosing to race and swing across the highest climbing towers available. But that injury was balanced out by years of creative play that kept my kids climbing, pretending, and running around with friends independently. America—the Land of the Brave—should recalibrate our expectations for childhood safety, including on playgrounds.

3. Reduce Paperwork Barriers to Kids to Play Sports

America has unparalleled sports clubs and athletic offerings, which are a tremendous asset for kids to stay fit and learn all the vital lessons that come with competing in athletics and being a part of a team. According to Project Play, as of 2023, about 55.4% of kids between ages 6 and 17 played sports. That’s not bad, but means that more than 4 out of 10 kids aren’t playing a sport and are missing out.

Policymakers should consider how to make it easier for kids to sign up for sports programs, including those offered by schools. Registering my healthy, athletic 16-year-old son to take part in his public high school’s sports program required an additional set of doctor’s forms that cost me a $35 fee to have filled out. Was this really necessary? Presumably the reason for this is so that schools and athletic programs can protect themselves from litigation if something were to happen to my son when he was playing sports. Yet enrolling him in the school already required current health records. Couldn’t I waive those rights then?

Policy leaders should build consent for athletic participation into school enrollment so that the default assumption is that students are eligible to play sports. For me, the small fee and another set of papers to fill out and upload online was a hassle, but for some families, it could be prohibitive. Especially for students from lower-income families or with absentee parents, we want coaches and teachers to be able to encourage kids to join teams and other extracurricular activities without waiting for parents to sign waivers. We should try to make it possible for all kids, no matter their family circumstances, to play.

America’s legal system is supposed to be about justice. Unfortunately, too often today, the legal system mostly imposes an expensive surcharge on all aspects of life, and prevents normal community activities that are good, not only for physical health, but mental and emotional health too. Let’s change this. Rationalize our legal system to make childhood—and parenting—fun again.