The desire to remove the learning risks of childhood may actually be doing more harm than good for your child, according to a UBC researcher.

Mariana Brussoni says risky play encourages creativity, develops social skills and fosters resilience.

Hovering over your child鈥檚 every action is an anxiety-induced exercise, and that anxiety gets passed on to a child.

Brussoni, an injury prevention researcher, says it has never been safer to be a kid growing up in Canada.

But those numbers often get dismissed by a parent, where the statistical reality is lost to a more fearful perception.

鈥淵ou see it in the U.S., where the crime stats continue to fall every year but people seem to think crime is getting worse,鈥� Brussoni said.

鈥淭here has never been fewer injury related child deaths in Canada as is the case now. But we can鈥檛 get past our collective anxiety.

鈥淚t鈥檚 so horrific, every parent鈥檚 nightmare your child will get seriously injured or kidnapped, you want to do anything you can to avoid it.鈥�

Brussoni pinpoints the change in parenting attitudes to the early 1980s, where the era of children running around the neighbourhood playing with their friends starting giving way to structured playtimes and more risk-free activities.

She says that attitude change was fueled by a surge of child raising advocates and authors promoting a more controlling atmosphere to raise kids, more moms entering the workforce which placed more kids in structured daycare and after-school programs, increasing reliance on vehicles to go anywhere.

鈥淧arents were consuming all this stuff and it created expectations in society about 鈥榯he right way鈥� to raise your kids, and it shifted our view of children as more vulnerable and much less capable of looking after themselves than was the case in previous generations,鈥� she said.

Adding to that, she notes, is children brought up in that 鈥榟elicopter parent鈥� environment are carrying on that tradition with their kids today.

As a result, Brussoni says research shows that just 37 per cent of children play outside every day, and just even per cent of children under the age of 10 are allowed to go out and play on their own.

鈥淭hey go out only for structured activities or they stay indoors staring at screens,鈥� she said.

鈥淏asically what that is doing is parents are passing on their anxieties to children, and there decision-making is anxiety-based rather than on realistic expectations.鈥�

Brussoni says suddenly going from zero to 100 in risk aversion contemplation is difficult for any parent to adapt into, as she suggests taking smaller baby steps to build up confidence both in your as a parent and your child for what both of you can handle when he or she steps outside the door on their own.

How to process that change is what convinced Brossoni to create OutsidePlay.ca, a website that showcases the latest research on injury prevention and the importance of outdoor play for kids on their own.

鈥淚鈥檓 asked often to speak to school or parent groups on this topic but I can only reach so many people that way, so we thought the website is a way to get our message out to more people,鈥� she said.

A parent herself of two kids, ages 9 and 10, Brussoni said tend to naturally be more risk averse, but she was startled by the response from her son, then age 7, about going to a close-by park in their East Vancouver neighbourhood.

鈥淗e was afraid he might get kidnapped, and that message didn鈥檛 come from me so he picked up it up from somewhere else.鈥�

She says encouraging more risk is really about expanding a child鈥檚 comfort zone, to feel comfortable enough to make positive choices about climbing that tree or crossing a street safely on their own.

鈥淭hey figure out for themselves when given the opportunity what their limits are in a given activity and feeling comfortable in doing it.鈥�