In PHQP 0004 Learning Is Risky, Jeff explores how children must navigate physical, social, emotional, and intellectual risks as part of their development, emphasizing the importance of hazard mitigation over risk elimination in early learning settings. He also digs into the importance of differentiating between Dangers, Hazards, And Risks. Plus, hear about the latest Amazon Idea and, of course, the Dad Joke of the Week! Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0004 Learning Is Risky Episode Notes Danger Hazard Risk Risky Play 4 Types Of Early Learning Risk Taking Understanding Danger, Hazard, And Risk Ellen Sandseter’s 6 Categories Of Risky Play Embracing Risk 3 Hazard Categories 5 Hazard Mitigation Strategies The Learning Is Risky Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I'm Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So I'm out for a walk in the neighborhood after a thunderstorm and a neighborhood kid sees me and starts coming in my direction and he quickly realizes my dog Gigi isn't with me. And he looks crestfallen because he was really more interested in seeing the dog than me myself. And he asks where she is and I explain to him that she's at home hiding in the bathtub because she's worried that thunder might come back and she doesn't like thunder. And he explains that he used to be scared of thunder and and then he he'd learned that thunder was just noise and it couldn't really hurt him and he's not scared of thunder anymore and we talk a little bit more and then he gets this this look on his face this realization and he says you know what that means I'm braver than a husky dog. And he went off feeling big and powerful. Young children love to feel big and powerful and capable in a world that they don't often understand and in a world where they often don't have a lot of opportunities to be powerful. So that's kind of a fun little story at least I thought so. Topic one, dangers, hazards, risks, and kittens. I thought we'd spend this episode digging in to risk and related topics. So we got to deal with some definitions first. One, a danger is something that may cause harm like a kitten. They look all cute and fuzzy and furry but they've got those little razor blades in their fingertips and those equally dangerous razor blades in their mouth and they don't have a lot of control over them yet and they're still testing them out. So kittens, although cute, are something that's potentially dangerous, something that may cause harm. Most everything is something that may cause harm. I might give myself a paper cut with this index card later and bleed out. It could happen. A hazard is a danger not easily seen or predicted. And again, like that kitten, those teeth and claws, especially if you've never met a kitten before, are hazards. They're dangers that are not easily seen or predicted if you aren't aware of them. Thirdly, a risk is something you can observe, evaluate, and choose. You can observe, evaluate a kitten, for example, and decide if you want to pick it up, if you want to engage in it. And in early learning settings, I think we often conflate these three terms, risk, hazard, and danger. And I think it really helps in keeping programs safe for kids when we break them up and clarifies those distinctions. We'll get into more of this in a bit and this is going to be a recurring topic on the show. One other thing about this is that mitigating those hazards is one of the big jobs of us keeping kids safe in early learning settings. So making kids aware of the teeth and claws of kittens, making sure we're maybe wearing long-sleeve sweatshirts when we interact with a kitten for the first time in case the claws and teeth do come out, and just granting that awareness that this thing could cause you harm. It's not the risk-taking that where children get injured in programs, it's the lack of hazard mitigation.
