Why We All Need Roughhousing

Kids – and Parents – Gone Wild

By Deirdre Wilson

Why We All Need More Roughhousing

When I was a kid, my siblings and I rafted down our staircase in sleeping bags. And I remember clearly my mother’s outrage when she discovered us: “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?!”

Moms – and many dads, too – have thwarted wild, risky play for generations. Today, with the laser-beam focus on keeping kids safe from toxins, physical injuries, predators and more, cries of “Be careful,” and “No! Someone could get hurt,” are parenting mantras.

So a new book advocating that mom and dad let loose and wrestle, mattress-surf down the stairs or jump off a low-hanging roof with their kids is bound to shock our cautious sensibilities.

That’s exactly what psychologist Larry Cohen, Ph.D., and physician Anthony DeBenedet, M.D., want. Their book, The Art of Roughhousing: Good Old-Fashioned Horseplay and Why Every Kid Needs It (Quirk Books, 2011), turns the idea that parents have to keep kids’ raucous behavior in check on its head.

“As a society we’ve gone a little bit overboard. We’ve switched from safety first to safety only,” says Cohen, a specialist in play therapy whose acclaimed 2001 book Playful Parenting advocates using play to bond with our kids, solve behavior problems and boost their confidence.

“I think the bigger danger isn’t bumping your head while sliding down the stairs, it’s vegetating with your oversized thumbs,” Cohen says of children’s sedentary, screen-dominated lifestyles.

Besides, by quashing rowdy play, Cohen and DeBenedet assert, parents are missing out on an ideal way to bond with their kids and enhance their intelligence, physical fitness, social skills and sense of morality.