A Fairfax County Playground Outlaws ‘Loitering at Slide Entry or Exit’

“Welcome! Play Secure,” reads the signal at a Fairfax County Public Faculty playground in Virginia, simply outdoors of Washington, D.C. The signal additionally lists a number of easy guidelines—21 of them, by my depend.

First off, the playground ought to by no means be used when it’s frozen. Or moist.

There will be no climbing on issues like the protection rails (that are mainly simply fences). Children should not put on any clothes with drawstrings, hoods, or toggles whereas they’re enjoying, as a result of this stuff may get caught on one thing. (Ponytails appear grandmothered in.)

On the slide, youngsters should “take turns,” “sit in an upright place,” and “not climb.” There additionally should be “no loitering at slide entry or exit.”

Loiter not, little ones!

“That is actually a playground that is for 2- to 5-year-olds,” says Katie Courtney, a 32-year-old mother of 4 who introduced the signal to my consideration. The slide, she says, is “about as tall as an grownup.”

Nonetheless, when a baby will get as much as the highest of the slide, legally they need to hustle their butt proper down. This irks Courtney, who has a grasp’s diploma in training and used to show preschool.

“A part of the enjoyable of being on the playground is that for 3 seconds you are on the high of the slide—you might have one second of being in cost,” she says.

And if one other child is correct behind you?

“How exhausting is it for a 4-year-old to barter, ‘You should transfer! You are blocking everybody else!’?” she wonders.

With out authorized counsel? That is loopy.

Nonetheless, the slide guidelines pale compared to the foundations for the monkey bars and rings. Children should not allowed to sit down or stroll on the monkey bars, nor can they “skip rings or rungs.”

Courtney finds this insupportable. If youngsters really feel able to skip a hoop or rung, she says, they need to be allowed to go for it.

“It offers them some confidence of their choice making,” she says. Drive youngsters to observe guidelines like that “and also you suppose you are defending your 4-year-old from getting damage, then unexpectedly you might have a 17-year-old who would not know the right way to decide.”

Taking part in on the swings can be strictly regulated. The principles state there will be just one little one at a time, they need to “sit in an upright place,” and there’s to be no “twirling.” Can they leap off? No, after all not.

Fairfax County didn’t reply to a request for remark in regards to the signal.

Tony Christopher, govt director of the Nationwide Institute for Play, says that playgrounds put up these indicators so as to “mitigate the legal responsibility of the entity liable for the playground (faculty, municipality, and many others.) within the occasion they’re sued.”

Boston School psychology professor Peter Grey, an skilled on free play and co-founder with me of Let Develop, has seen such indicators at a number of playgrounds.

“The one restriction that must be added to make them full is ‘No Taking part in,'” he says.