Daily Herald opinion: Swing, spin, slide: Today’s suburban playgrounds offer safer, more inclusive places to play

If you grew up decades ago, playgrounds came mostly in basic shades of black and gray.

Metal equipment, dotted by rust, offered a selection of the basics — typically swings, jungle gyms and slides, accompanied by the standard germ-filled sandbox.

Parks were fun, far-from-fancy places to meet up with friends or play dizzy daredevil with endless spins on creaky merry-go-rounds.

Today, kids still head to the park to see how high they can climb or how far they can swing, but they do so in bright, colorful, creative spaces far different from what their parents and grandparents experienced in the past, as our Jake Griffin pointed out in story that ran Sunday.

Playgrounds are far safer, with a focus on preventing injuries that’s long overdue.

If, right about now, you’re tempted to point out that millions of functioning adults survived cuts from rusty equipment and tumbles from the monkey bars, we hear you. More than a few of us can remember an emergency room visit tied to playground mishaps.

But today’s playground equipment is designed to prevent the need for such visits, perhaps with additional enclosures or to minimize the potential for harm. Tumbling to a softer surface is safer than crashing onto concrete.

“Safety is the first-and-foremost evolution,” Wheaton Park District Executive Director Michael Benard told Griffin. “Standards were developed over the last 30 years based on injury statistics. Falls from equipment is one of the biggest concerns and why we install surfacing such as engineered wood fiber and unitary rubberized surfaces. These also provide better accessibility that allows our playgrounds to be more inclusive.”

What does being more inclusive look like? Many parks now have features designed to appeal to children with physical challenges or those with sensory issues who might not do well playing on noisy, crowded equipment.

The Round Lake Area Park District’s Hero Park, for example, was planned with an eye on being both inclusive and accessible. That includes ramps, high-back swings and educational play panels. Imagine what that means for children with disabilities who would otherwise be excluded.

Creativity also figures into designs now more than ever before, and that too is an important change.

Challenging configurations and climbing stations with multiple points of entry offer more options and more outlets for imaginative play. That’s particularly important for kids who spend much of their day on screens and need to test themselves physically.

While it’s fine to get a little nostalgic for playgrounds of the past, we should all be grateful for the changes that have made parks more accommodating to children with special needs and safer for the next generation of budding daredevils.