This episode of the Sage Family Podcast is an engaging  interview with Peter Gray, Evolutionary Psychologist, blogger and author of the inspiring book Free to Learn. Peter explains why the adult way of looking at childhood can have a negative impact on childhood learning and the consequences of disallowing inoculations of risk. Peter is a research professor of psychology at Boston College and founding board member and president of the alliance for self-directed education.

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Subject Area: Risky Play

Why does the phrase “Drive fast, take chances” elicit both laughter and fear? Researchers have identified a kind of developmentally important play called “Scary Funny.” Listen to this engaging conversation between Occupational Therapist Kathleen Lockyer and Dr Mariana Brussoni, risk researcher from the University of British Columbia to learn more about how a little bit of risk can go a long way towards a child reaching their true potential.

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Length: 1h : 33m : 00s

Subject Area: Risky Play

This fascinating dissertation from well known researcher Roger Hart is almost 40 years old but is as relevant now as ever. It is a beautiful depiction of life not that long ago which seems worlds away from the indoor, screen dominated, car-oriented lives of children today.

Hart spent two years in a small New England town, following and mapping children’s movement and perception of their landscape as they built cubbies, fished at the river, explored, biked and roamed. He became part of the neighbourhood as these children shared their most treasured and tucked away play areas, far from watchful parents. Footage taken of the children at play during this time can still be found on the internet. Thirty years later, Hart returned to the town where some of the children still lived, now grown up with children of their own. He found that despite their rather free-range upbringing, these parents would not dream of letting their children play unsupervised that far from home.

Hart makes some beautiful observations.

– “Small patches of dirt throughout the town are the most intensively used of all children’s places.”

– Children like to find small places, as “places of retreat, to look out upon the world from a place of one’s own, as places for experimenting with how to put things together… In each of these activities a child is probably exploring his or her relationship with the environment, both social and physical.”

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Entertaining and in depth conversation with author Hanna Rosin about modern Western society’s obsession with child safety, which asks whether we have stripped childhood of independence and the joys of discovery.  Discusses why many parents are full of nostalgic memories of their own free range childhoods yet so fixed on the idea that the world is a more dangerous place than it used to be.

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Length: 52m : 18s

Subject Area: Risk, safety

Very active blog from radio/TV personality and parent Lenore Skenazy who crusades on behalf of children to be allowed a bit of unsupervised time to play, learn and grow.  Lenore refutes the fear driven belief that children are in constant danger from kidnappers, germs, grades, frustration, failure, bugs, sleepovers and/or the perils of non-organic vegetables.

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