Abstract
In this conceptual article, we draw upon the literature regarding cognitive and behavioural factors that underpin childhood anxiety to outline how a range of these risk markers might be targeted through adventurous play. When children play in an adventurous way, climbing trees, riding their bikes fast downhill and jumping from rocks, they experience feelings of fear and excitement, thrill and adrenaline. We propose that the positive, thrilling and playful emotions associated with this type of child-led play facilitate exposure to fear-provoking situations and, in doing so, provide opportunities for children to learn about physiological arousal, uncertainty and coping. We hypothesise that these learning opportunities will, over time, reduce children’s risk for elevated anxiety by increasing children’s expectations and ability to cope with anxiety, decreasing intolerance of uncertainty and preventing catastrophic misinterpretations of physiological arousal. If our conceptual model is correct, then ensuring that children have the physical and psychological space required to play in an adventurous way may help to decrease their risk for elevated or clinical anxiety.
Highlights
It is well established that trajectories to anxiety disorders begin early in life (Caspi et al 1988)
We argue that this type of play provides opportunities for children to learn about uncertainty, fear, arousal and coping and describes the mechanisms through which we hypothesise that adventurous play might affect children’s risk for elevated and clinical anxiety
We propose that adventurous play may be one way of decreasing children’s long-term risk by providing important opportunities to learn about coping, uncertainty and physiological arousal, not that it provides a broad solution to child anxiety
Summary
An important component of animal locomotor play appears to be to experience thrill through exposure to moderately fear-provoking situations. It has been proposed that, in juvenile animals, this type of play provides exposure to moderately fear-provoking stimuli and facilitates learning about how to cope emotionally with the unexpected Sandseter and Kennair propose that through risky play, children naturally perform exposures, which function to reduce developmentally normal fears. They argue that the positive, thrilling emotion associated with this type of play facilitates and motivates exposure to feared stimuli. We hypothesise that this type of play may help to prevent elevated anxiety more broadly defined
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