Everything Is a Monkey Bar

Like any good uncle, despite the bleak weather, I took my nieces and nephew to the park.

They played on the swings and slides, and refused to leave without having a go on the monkey bars.

Later, we walked past another park with rugby goalposts.
But that’s not what they saw.

They screamed, “Monkey bars!”

Where I saw an object with a label, they saw something climbable.
That’s the benefit of a child’s cognitive flexibility. It gives them the freedom to re-classify the world before categories harden.

At some point, we start categorising the world by what things are, rather than what they could be. Objects become fixed. Roles harden. Paths narrow. Rugby goalposts stop being something you can play on and become something you walk past.

Children don’t do that yet.

Perhaps I should have stopped them running onto the field towards the posts.
Instead, I found myself standing there, trying to pinpoint exactly when I stopped seeing the world the way they do.

Maybe the real difference between confidence and caution isn’t talent or experience - it’s whether you still see the world as something you’re allowed to climb.

As we head into 2026, I hope we treat it a little more like a set of monkey bars.

✍️ Note to self: Most limits are just labels we stopped questioning.