It was a beautiful fall day today, so I brought my kids to a
local playground. This particular playground has a large, flat, paved area with
giant rocks to climb on (it’s also a spray park during the summer) with a
circle of benches around it; a row of covered picnic tables; a sandbox; a large
climbing structure with a slide, a swinging bridge, and monkey bars; a smaller
climbing structure with a smaller slide and swinging bridge; a swing set with
traditional-style swings; and a swing set with bucket-style swings for little
ones. The individual components are terrific, but the layout of the park as a
whole is…well, let’s just say it was obviously not designed by a parent. At
least, not a parent of multiple children.
The biggest limiting factor that should be accounted for in
playground design is the bucket swings. Anyone who has ever met a small child
understands that once a child is in a bucket swing, the adult accompanying that
child will be unable to move more than 5 steps away from the swing for more
than 23 seconds without instigating a screaming fit that will cause every
parent within a 50-foot radius to stare in judgment (in the supervising adult’s
mind, anyway). That single limitation effects the placement of every other item
in the entire playground.
The two swing sets at this particular playground are at the
opposite ends from each other, which means that I had to continually race back
and forth across the entire width of the playground at top speed to keep
pushing both my children to an acceptable height, much like a circus performer
racing to keep multiple plates spinning at once.
In a parent-designed playground, the swings for larger
children would be placed directly across from the smaller swings. Ideally, the
two swing sets should be placed such that an average height adult can
simultaneously push two children, one on each swing set, without needing to
take more than 2 or 3 steps in either direction. This would eliminate much
sibling squabbling over a parent’s attention, as well as preventing parental
exhaustion from cutting the children’s playground time short. And, if the
parent in question is as uncoordinated as I am, it would also minimize the
chances of a liability lawsuit due to a parental faceplant while racing between
swing sets.
Another design change based on a parent’s being anchored to
the small swing set is that there should be a clear line of sight from the
swings to every place in the playground that a pre-schooler could conceivably
go, particularly all points of ingress and egress. In the park we were at
today, the smaller play structure was right in front of the smaller swings,
which seemed like a good idea until I was trying to push my daughter on the
swings while at the same time trying to make sure that my son wasn’t running
other children over with his bike on the far side of the park (or pedalling out of the park and down the street). So I found
myself pushing the swing a few times, then running over to the walkway where I
could see past the play structure, spending 30-40 seconds locating my son and
confirming there were no wounded children in his wake, and then racing back
before my daughter’s swing slowed to an unacceptable height. Lather, rinse,
repeat. By the time my kids were tired enough to want to go home, I was
downright exhausted. If I were designing that playground, the small play
structure would either be so short that the average adult could see over it or
I’d have added a wide tunnel running from the swings toward the rocks at adult
eye level that would allow parents to keep an eye on their older kids and a
hand on their younger kids at the same time.
And finally, I would add more benches throughout the
playground. Because even when you don’t have to run quite so far and fast to
keep your children happy and supervised, being on a playground with your kids
is exhausting!
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