An inclusive playground lets kids of all abilities play together
“Child’s play” in common parlance means something that is easily accomplished — an effortless breeze.
Since covering the November meeting of the Guilderland Town Board, however, we have delved into the research on child’s play and learned that encouraging it is anything but a simple task.
At that meeting, Christine Duffy, a Guilderland resident and persistent advocate for people with disabilities, spoke against spending funds on a box lacrosse field, saying that, instead, the board should spend funds so disabled children could play in the town parks.
“We don’t have enough opportunities for children with disabilities to be in our public parks,” said Duffy. “And morally, this town board should be ashamed of themselves for their conduct.”
Councilwoman Amanda Beedle responded that she had looked into getting a sensory-friendly playground for children who are on the autism spectrum. And Deputy Supervisor Christine Napierski said, “I think we need to have handicapped-accessible playground equipment in every playground in every park.”
While Napierski voted with the rest of the board to release town funds for the box lacrosse field, she cited the need to secure state funds and concluded, “I think you are right, Ms. Duffy. All children should be able to play in our parks with their friends and their families. And all our parks should be handicapped accessible and have handicapped equipment that all children can use.”
Since, over the past decade, The Enterprise has covered the installation of playground equipment for handicapped kids at Guilderland’s public schools, our first thought was to compile a list of these playgrounds so families in the district would be aware of them and could use them in off-school hours.
It seemed to us that most Guilderland families drive rather than walk to parks and so could easily drive to one of the district’s five neighborhood elementary schools.
Guilderland Superintendent Marie Wiles confirmed for us that all five elementary school playgrounds “have equipment or conditions that make them accessible to students with disabilities” and that the playgrounds are open for public use when school is not in session.
The most accessible playground, she said, is at Pine Bush Elementary where a $25,000 grant secured through then-State Senator George Amedore put in equipment for students who use wheelchairs.
The next most accessible is at Pine Bush Elementary where there are three specialized pieces of equipment, including a swing, something to crawl on, and a spinning seat, said Wiles.
“The ground cover is rubberized plastic for wheelchairs,” she added.
The next most accessible playground is at Guilderland Elementary followed by Westmere Elementary School as both of those schools have hosted summer programs for kids with disabilities.
Altamont Elementary School, Wiles said, just got a new playground from the most recent capital project and it includes elements selected for students with disabilities.
The least accessible playground is at Lynnwood Elementary School, said Wiles, adding, “Every time we do improvements, we think about ways to make them more accessible.”
Calling it “a work in progress,” Wiles noted that the playground equipment is “astonishingly expensive.”
Wiles called the district’s playgrounds “a huge community investment.”
Playground funds often come through the district’s capital projects, approved by voters, but also from grants and fundraising by school PTAs.
The district does not have playground equipment geared for children on the autism spectrum, Wiles said, but the district’s goal is “to meet the needs of each and every child — one size fits all is not the way to go.”
She went on, “It’s a critical investment considering how important play is to children.”
Citing Jonathan Haidt’s best-selling book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” Wiles said that children need to play on their own with peers and without adult orchestration to learn how to solve problems.
A social psychologist, Haidt argues that the combined trends of over-protecting children in the real world and under-protecting children in the virtual world have led to the current crisis.
“Children today in real life have very little independence while on social media, they have too much independence,” said Wiles.
She concluded, “There’s a lot of value in saying, ‘Go out and play.’ Kids need a safe place to do that.”
Indeed, the United Nations has determined that engaging “in play and recreational activities” is a fundamental right of all children since play is an important contributor to child health and development.
A study published last year in The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, titled “Occupational Injustice and the Right to Play: A Systematic Review of Accessible Playgrounds for Children With Disabilities,” addresses the issue of play inequity.
The researchers conclude that children with disabilities have decreased engagement in activities that provide opportunities for play, social participation, and motor-skills development.
They urge addressing “occupational injustice in the playground setting by engaging in program development, policy, and playground design to reduce stigma and increase accessibility.”
But how would the town of Guilderland or any town that cares about equity for its children go about doing this?
An observational study, published in 2022 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, provides a meaningful path forward.
The Toronto-based study — the first of its kind — consisted of carefully calibrated naturalistic observations of children and their family members at a community playground over the course of a year, just before the onset of the pandemic.
The inclusive community playground, which is pictured and described in great detail in the paper, consists of four thematic sections: music/sensory, early childhood, freestanding equipment, and the main structure.
The music section, for example, has drums, chimes, and a xylophone along with wheels, mirrors, and gears in a tactile and sensory play center.
The early childhood section has a “cozy dome” for climbing or playing inside of or, for children with sensory needs, it could serve as a welcoming space with reduced sensory stimulation.
The section with freestanding equipment was designed as a space for children to play in pairs or small groups, for example, with three types of swings: a belt seat swing, a moulded bucket seat swing with a harness, and a “friendship” swing that allows for two children to swing together while facing one another. The researchers found greater peer play in this section, accounting for nearly 60 percent of all observations.
The 15,000-square-foot playground is part of a larger park; it has its own parking area and paved pathways from other parts of the park leading to it.
The eye-opening part of the study, “Children’s Usage of Inclusive Playgrounds: A Naturalistic Observation Study of Play,” is that this inclusive playground is attractive to all children.
Rather than, say, just adding a swing that would work for a disabled child to a pre-existing town playground, as Christine Duffy called for, a carefully designed inclusive playground would offer different levels of play for children of all different abilities.
The astonishing expense, as Wiles phrased it, of playground equipment would make it cost prohibitive to outfit each one of the town’s playgrounds with equipment for children with handicaps, as Napierski suggested.
While, at first blush, Napierski’s idea seems the most noble goal, we realized after reading this study that a single inclusive playground to serve all children in town is the path to follow.
“Inclusive playgrounds that are designed to be physically accessible and welcoming to children with disabilities may provide equal and equitable access to play for all children,” the Toronto paper says.
So, rather than, as Amanda Beedle envisioned, equipment just for kids on the spectrum, this playground would incorporate features like the “cozy dome” that would meet the needs of neurodivergent children while other children would enjoy climbing on the dome.
“Despite the lack of consensus on how play is defined,” the Toronto-based study says, “it is understood to involve activities that are freely chosen, child-led, opportunistic, fun, and can be experienced independently as well as with others.”
However, the study points out that traditional playgrounds can present physical barriers to play, often resulting in marginalization or even outright exclusion of children with disabilities.
The study also notes that, while any play develops a child’s social, cognitive, and physical skills, outdoor play increases learning opportunities, enhances cooperation, and decreases conflict between peers. It says, further, that including natural elements, like tree stumps or boulders, leads to a larger variety of play behaviors.
Playgrounds offer a place for families to gather and research shows that kids who go to playgrounds engage in more physical activity and have increased gross motor skills, which has been linked to improved fitness, reduced risk for disease, and improved mental health in children.
An inclusive playground, such as the one used in the Toronto study, goes beyond accessible design to allow kids of all ages and genders, both with and without disabilities, to play together, or in solitude, and allows families to play with their kids, too.
We commend the Guilderland school district for being aware of and trying to meet the needs of all of the children it serves and we encourage families to use those five playgrounds when school is not in session. But we urge the town to create an inclusive playground, perhaps at the centrally located Tawasentha Park, that would serve as a magnet for children of all abilities to play together.