Don’t Fall on the Groms: How Kids and Adults Can Better Share Climbing Gyms

In a word, how do climbers, parents, gym owners, and youth coaches from around the U.S. describe the dialogue on dealing with kids in climbing gyms?

“Torturous,” says Grayston Leonard, owner of Long Beach Rising, a climbing gym in California.

“Contentious,” says Lily Kral, owner of Boardworks, a board climbing facility in Bend, Oregon.

And to Allyson Gunsallus, creator of the film series Hand Holds: Climbing after Parenthood, it’s “enlightening.”

Whatever the word for the discussion on this increasingly timely topic, issues related to sharing space with children in gyms revolve around both etiquette and safety. I interviewed parents and child-free members of the climbing community for this story, and together, we went over the common grievances we’ve heard—or had. I also did some Reddit rant deep diving.

Complaints mostly center upon kids with non-climber parents. Adult climbing gym-goers cite kids hovering over a single problem in packs or jumping on a just-brushed climb. They witness children of all ages sprinting, somersaulting, belly flopping, or rolling like a log on the mats. The cherry on top: when parents are too busy chatting or on their phones to notice.

These grievances grow into genuine concern for risk of bodily harm when kids end up in bouldering fall zones. In one such situation, a climber shared a video of himself falling on a girl in February. The reel now has more than 12 million views and a lot of inflamed opinions. Pro climber Alex Johnson chimed in with a comment last month: “I’ve seen this dozens of times in the gym and have almost been a victim of it myself, and so have friends. Kids running or climbing underneath people is so dangerous. Zero situational awareness. They need to be supervised, just like they would in a workout gym, it’s not a playground. 100% not on you.”

As many of the comments on that video and others like it reveal, a blame game emerges and ensnares parents, adult climbers, gym owners, gym staff, coaches, and the kids themselves. How can these parties free themselves of fraught social media discord and real-life tension, and find ways to better share the space? As a mom of a toddler who I hope will be a more frequent gym-goer soon, I wanted to see what the sport’s different stakeholders had to say about the issue. We also weighed solutions, ranging from communal correction to age-specific spaces.

“Set up for conflict”: How frictions arise with families in climbing gyms

Mike Rougeux has coached youth climbing in Bend, Oregon for more than 20 years. He’s brought his son, who’s now seven, with him to local climbing gyms since he was three. So in the past, it hurt to hear his friends in the climbing community complain about kids at the gym.

But as climbing gyms grow and commercialize, Rougeux understands how frictions arise. More casual climbers and individuals who are just climbing-curious are heading to the gym. “We have facilities where it’s a rainy day and parents are like, ‘What should we do today? Oh, let’s try rock climbing,’” Rougeux says. “So you have parents and kids entering a space where you just bring your kid there, and the parents don’t understand the social norms of how to operate within that space. Of course, neither do the kids. We’re set up for conflict to happen.”

All the climbers, coaches, and gym owners I spoke with agree that parents—however new they are to indoor climbing—should be closely monitoring their children. Not just nearby, but staying right on their heels. They also agree that gyms need to supply families with the information they need to understand the urgency in doing so. “For first-time folks going to the gym with a kid, the parental obligation is extremely high,” says Joey Churchman, a climber and father of three children ages one to five. “They need to be responsible for their child. It’s constant attention.”

But these folks also agree that the conversation shouldn’t stop there. Yes, parents need to watch their kids. But what else can be done before, during, and after mistakes are made? To start, Rougeux and the others say that a little grace for families goes a long way. “It’s intimidating going in and trying something for the first time, and you’re the adult trying to lead your kid,” he says. “You don’t know what to do. So now you’re relying on the 16-year-old behind the desk to tell you. The gyms, staff, and community can probably do a better job of helping.”

“It takes a village”: Sourcing ideas from other sports communities

Grayston Leonard, 35, didn’t start climbing until he was in his 20s. He grew up skating, and when I spoke with him, he was in his car on the way to go surfing. To Leonard, a father of three and a gym owner since 2019, indoor climbing could use more of the clear communication he received as a kid getting into sports. “In surf and skate, you’re constantly sharing these places,” he says. Out on the water, Leonard saw adults telling off adolescents all the time. “No one holds back,” he says. “No one’s shy about this. You’re teaching them the rules of how this works, how you share this space, and how you do it safely and respectfully.”

Adults and kids then return to those spots, recognize each other, and eventually learn from each other. “People will see you pushing your comfort zone and cheer you on and root for you,” Leonard says. “That then creates this feeling of belonging.”

At the gym, however, Leonard doesn’t apply quite as gruff of an approach to correcting kids. But he is direct with them. “People should feel more freedom to speak up to kids,” he says. “Kids don’t care what their parents say, but when they hear it from someone else, it freaks them out.”

When Leonard spots a kid running underneath him while he’s climbing, he doesn’t let it slide. He’ll go up to the kid and calmly explain the risk: “Hey, you ran underneath me. It’s really dangerous. I don’t want to fall on you.” It usually invokes momentary stranger danger and a dash to the parents. Leonard will give them a little wave. “That’s really all it needs to be,” he says. “Instead, there seems to be this really passive aggressive behavior of: ‘Why don’t these kids know any better?’ There seems to be no forgiveness, no grace, no leniency toward this. I get it. But let’s not act like we weren’t all kids ourselves, learning all of this stuff at some point. That’s where this saying takes on a whole new meaning: ‘It takes a village.’”

Allyson Gunsallus emphasizes that there needs to be a level of tact to these interventions. As a mom to a three-year-old (with another on the way), Gunsallus has climbed for nearly two decades, primarily in Yosemite. In an effort to learn from pro climbers who have navigated the challenges of becoming a parent, she created the documentary series Hand Holds. She tries to empathize with families who are new to the oft-unspoken norms of climbing gyms. “It’s important for us to consider how we would receive the correction we give, to help us be welcoming and helpful, rather than abrasive and confrontational,” she observes.

But giving the groms a chance to learn doesn’t mean letting inattentive parents off easy, Leonard cautions. At his gym, Long Beach Rising, parents to kids under 12 must closely trail them at all times. No bench sitting, no “la-dee-da-ing.” The staff has only had to pull people out of the space, refund them, and send them away a few times, but it’s something Leonard is willing to do if rules are repeatedly broken. “I would rather tell someone they can’t come back for a period of time or that their session is done for these reasons, than be afraid of the negative Yelp review,” he says. “You have to be willing to have those uncomfortable confrontations.”

Whether in the form of uncomfortable parent call-outs or direct communication with kids, this communal approach relies on active engagement. But not all adult climbers may want to step in. Not everyone wants to discipline someone else’s kid—and not every parent is receptive to it.

Boardworks owner Lily Kral remembers encountering that resistance. “I’ve seen it many times and heard about it many times, when there is a gentle correction and the parent doesn’t react appropriately,” Kral says. “In order to really facilitate those rules and ensure they’re enforced, you need a lot of front desk staff that are trained and have the confidence to correct parents.”

In her early years of working at a climbing gym, Kral didn’t necessarily feel equipped to do that. “I kind of cared,” Kral says of her time working the front desk as a 16-year-old. “These are really large spaces and front desk staff are busy checking folks in. They’re watching to make sure rules are enforced, but they can’t be everywhere.”

Another route: Designated climbing spaces for adults and kids

In 2021, Kral created a gym with no front desk staff and a few other unique features. Boardworks is a 24/7 climbing facility in Oregon dedicated solely to adjustable boards: Kilter, Decoy, Grasshopper, Tension Board 2, 2016 Moonboard, and a spray wall. But she also decided to make the space dedicated to adults: 18 and up for members, 16 and up for guests.

Kral chose to limit Boardworks to adults to suit the small gym’s 24-hour, staffless model—and to avoid “increasingly complicated” insurance policies related to minors. But the concept of offering climbers an adult-centered space was also enticing. She hadn’t seen many adult-only indoor climbing options. “People appreciate being able to climb without worrying about all of the problems we know can arise with climbing around kids,” she says. “Having a dedicated space for adults to work out, do their thing, and not worry about safety hazards or other complications.”

But adult-only gyms aren’t necessarily a knock on kids, Kral believes. “I have a lot of parents at the gym,” she says. “I don’t think that having a dedicated space for adults means that the intention behind it is to paint children in climbing gyms in a negative light. It’s purely to provide a more safe and dedicated space for what some adult climbers want to pursue.”

A group of dads that Kral has dubbed the “Dad Squad” go to her gym after putting their kids to bed. When they go indoor climbing with their children, they visit other gyms in Bend. They didn’t choose Boardworks to get away from kids, but rather to take advantage of its board-climbing focus and later operating hours. “The value of an adult-only climbing gym isn’t that there aren’t kids, it’s that you’re surrounded by adults,” says Daniel Ling, a member of the Dad Squad. He finds that the group’s night sessions at Boardworks provide a time and space in which trading stories about their kids throwing vegetables across the room is as enriching as swapping beta.

Adults aren’t the only demographic that could use dedicated space. In 2023, Rougeux opened the nation’s second youth-only climbing facility as the new HQ for Bend Endurance Academy. Before the facility opened, Rougeux coached climbers in the shared space of commercial gyms.

Back then, he tried to minimize his team’s impact by giving pep talks about representing the organization well in a public setting. He used to draft plans for practice that dispersed the kids rather than concentrating them on one wall. “But it was weird, because then, I had constraints placed on the coaching,” Rougeux says. “A lot of times, the way I was designing practice was strictly based off of managing the group and the impact the group would have within the gym.”

Now, the kids get their own version of a gymnastics center. Bend Endurance Academy hosts camps, the occasional birthday party, and one of the top-ranked competition climbing teams in the U.S. “No members, no day passes. It’s just youth programs, just like gymnastics,” Rougeux explains. “When they see those pads and want to do flips, we’re like, ‘Sick, let’s do flips.’”

The youth-centric space has brought something new out of Rougeux as a coach and the kids as climbers. “My coaching has totally changed,” he says. “It’s so much better across the board, from my highest-level athletes to our kindergarteners. It’s a better experience because we can design the space specific to the needs of who’s in front of us.” The kids at his gym are free to listen to high-tempo music, huddle up with more space, and hone specific movements. There’s been an energy shift, Rougeux says: “It elevates their experience in ways I didn’t really foresee.”

Rougeux recognizes that Bend Endurance Academy’s facility model isn’t feasible for youth recreational and competition climbing programs everywhere. But other gyms are already starting to adopt youth- or adult-designated spaces and time windows. The Circuit in Bend, for instance, has a contained kids’ climbing area with a slide in the middle. The gym has also introduced youth reservations for busy days like weekends and school holidays. Ruckus, a gym in Greensboro, North Carolina, offers a kids’ zone with challenging climbs for short wingspans.

Gunsallus encourages further exploration of these concepts and other ways to support families. She hopes to see the return of childcare, with which some climbing gyms used to experiment. An open, designated family area away from the mats would also help, or even allotting an unused yoga room. “A designated family space outside of the climbing fall zone could create a community among gym families that may even be strangers to each other,” Gunsallus says.

Though Rougeux and Ling both enjoy spending time in dedicated spaces, they also admit they miss the commingling of kids and adults. To them, and to Kral, it’s worth pursuing both options instead of pitting them against one another. They echo Leonard’s points about acting as a village to get along in shared spaces. Separate climbing facilities can also be harmonious within one community, as seen in Bend: Boardworks and Bend Endurance Academy have partnered up before, allowing the former’s adult climbing team limited access to the youth training center.

“As a community, the climbing world could be more inclusive to youth participants,” Rougeux says, “but I also directly see a need and a place for specific facilities or times.”

Final thoughts: How can gym communities approach solutions?

No single fix-all solution for safe, peaceful coexistence between kids and adults exists at climbing gyms. But the ideas that these gym owners, coaches, and parents shared with me may be able to alleviate some of the building tensions around kids in those spaces. From holding all parents of kid gym-goers to higher standards and communal communication strategies, to dedicated adult or kid spaces, many of these solutions can work in tandem to address the issue.

On my part, as a gym user, I’ll work on picturing different perspectives: of non-climber parents who don’t know what they don’t know, of the gym staff who feel uneasy squaring off with an inattentive parent, of the adult climbers who are just trying not break a little set of limbs, and of the kids who just want to play. “You can’t fault the children,” Kral says. “They’re kids. At the end of the day, it’s never the kids. It’s easy to forget that when they’re the ones running around.”

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