We can blame the ban, or ourselves

It won't come as a surprise to most of us that, as my colleague Francine Kopun reported in response to a posted ban on tobogganing at 45 hills in Toronto, experts in child development say kids kind of need the type of danger those hills offer.

- EDWARD KEENAN

It's not just "risky play," like tobogganing, that builds confidence and agency in young people, but the freedom to choose when to engage in it, Edward Keeenan writes, something that's become less common in today's world of hyperscheduled and closely supervised time.

"Experts are increasingly linking a decline in risky play - like tobogganing to the rising mental health crisis among children and youth," Kopun reported. Taking risks breeds confidence in children, as well as an improved ability to manage stress, uncertainty and anxiety, a development psychologist told Kopun, saying, "We're robbing kids of opportunities to get those positive effects." But I don't think the city bureaucrats banning tobogganing care.

Because frankly, most times when the city comes out to try to forbid (or try to demonstrate it is forbidding, which is not the same thing) any fun from taking place, in defiance of apparent common sense and decades of tradition, they aren't thinking about what's best for children, or residents, or city life in general.

Like when they tried to prohibit ball hockey on the street. Or when they continued to enforce bans on putting any sports equipment on the road. Or when they, for a time, banned and then heavily regulated skating on Grenadier Pond in High Park. And yes, when they ban tobogganing in places.