This is an audio long read from nature.

In this episode, why kids need to take more risks.

Science reveals the benefits of wild free play.

Written by Julian Novogrodski and read by me, Benjamin Thompson.

On a warm, sunny beach near Melbourne, Australia,

Alethea Jerobine watched her daughters scrambling up a jumble of rocks.

Can they do that? she worried about her 10-year-old and 13-year-old.

The rocks were pocked with crevices and so steep that they gave

Jerobine vertigo. Instinctively, she wanted to tell them to stop. At the same time, she knew her pangs

of anxiety were incongruous with her own research. What her children were doing is a kind of risky play,

activities ranging from climbing and jumping from heights

to simply leaving the watchful eye of an adult.

Jerobine is a public health and psychology researcher

at Deakin University in Melbourne, who studies the

wide-ranging benefits of risky play. Still, she's not immune to the pressure that many parents

and guardians feel to protect their children from every possible harm. Over the past two decades,

research has emerged showing that opportunities for risky play are crucial for healthy, physical, mental and emotional development.

Children need these opportunities to develop spatial awareness, coordination, tolerance of uncertainty and confidence.

Despite this, in many nations, risky play is now more restricted than ever,

thanks to misconceptions about risk and a general undervaluing of its benefits. Research shows that children

know more about their own abilities than adults might think, and some environments designed for risky play point

the way forwards. Many researchers think that there's more to learn about the benefits, but because play

...