Everything parents and carers need to teach, adapt and enjoy Double Dutch with children from toddlerhood upwards, backed by what the science of play tells us about why it matters.
Double Dutch is a skipping game played with two long ropes turned simultaneously in opposite directions, while one or more players jump through the crossing arcs in the middle. To play, two turners each hold one end of both ropes and swing them in an eggbeater pattern; the jumper enters from the side, times their first step, and keeps moving their feet quickly enough to clear each rope as it arrives. That, at its simplest, is the whole game. Children as young as two and three can join in, provided the ropes are turned slowly and low, and they are guided by a trusted adult hand at the start.
The game almost certainly arrived in Britain and North America with Dutch settlers in the seventeenth century, though its popularity exploded in twentieth-century cities where streets doubled as playgrounds. Today it remains one of the most demanding and rewarding outdoor games a child can learn, precisely because it asks the body and mind to cooperate under a kind of joyful pressure. The good news for parents of very young children is that the skills Double Dutch builds, and the adaptations that make it accessible, are well within reach of a garden, a pair of washing lines or a park visit.
Why movement-rich play matters early
The World Health Organization recommends that children under five engage in a variety of physical activities, including energetic play, spread throughout the day. Rhythmic, whole-body games such as skipping sit squarely within those guidelines, supporting cardiovascular health, coordination and the kind of joyful movement that Jaak Panksepp identified as one of the brain's primary emotional systems: the PLAY system, which is active, social and deeply motivating in young mammals.
You need two ropes of equal length, ideally between three and five metres each for adult-sized play, and three or more participants. Two players act as turners, one at each end, each holding one end of both ropes. The ropes are turned alternately: as the right-hand rope rises on the turner's right side, the left-hand rope is descending, creating a continuous, alternating wave between the two turners.
The jumper stands beside one of the turners, watches the rhythm, and enters when the near rope hits the ground, stepping in on that beat. Once inside, the feet must move in a rapid alternating pattern, left-right-left-right, to clear each rope as it comes. The object is simply to keep going for as long as possible without catching a rope. In competitive Double Dutch, additional challenges are introduced: performing tricks mid-jump, calling out rhymes, or completing a set number of jumps before exiting cleanly to the side.
A single skipping rope is already a rich tool. Two ropes compound the demands in ways that are genuinely valuable for a developing brain. The jumper must process two overlapping rhythms simultaneously, plan each footfall in advance, and adjust in real time. This is precisely the kind of executive-function workout that Adele Diamond's research on early childhood identifies as central to school readiness: working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility all engaged at once, wrapped in something that feels like pure fun.
The bilateral coordination required, moving the left and right sides of the body in careful alternation, also mirrors the demands of activities that Jeffrey Trawick-Smith associates with strong gross-motor development in the under-fives. And because Double Dutch is almost always played socially, it layers language, turn-taking and shared attention on top of all that physical challenge.
The thirty-million-word gap and outdoor play
Hart and Risley's landmark research, and later work by Dana Suskind, showed how powerfully language-rich interaction shapes early development. Skipping games are traditionally accompanied by rhymes and chants, and those call-and-response rhythms give toddlers a structured, enjoyable reason to listen, repeat and anticipate language, making the playground a surprisingly effective classroom.
A two-year-old will not master the full game, and that is entirely the point: the goal is joyful participation, not performance. Here are the most effective ways to bring very young children into the experience.
Sergio Pellis and Vivien Pellis, whose work on the neuroscience of social play is widely cited, argue that negotiated, rule-governed play between children builds the social brain in ways that solitary activity cannot replicate. Double Dutch is a near-perfect example: it requires constant negotiation, the acknowledgement that someone else's turn comes next, and genuine cooperation from the turners, whose skill and patience directly enable the jumper's success or failure.
For toddlers especially, the experience of being the one who turns the rope, of being the helper rather than the star, is a lesson in perspective-taking that no worksheet can match. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff have written extensively on how playful, child-directed social activity accelerates the development of precisely those collaborative skills that predict long-term wellbeing and academic engagement.
The balance, timing and spatial awareness that Double Dutch develops do not have to wait for a skipping rope. A range of traditional outdoor games and well-designed toys build the same neural pathways through different, equally joyful routes.
Skittles, for instance, require the thrower to judge distance, control force and track a rolling ball through space: all tasks that engage the same cerebellum-cortex conversation that rhythmic jumping does. Traditional lawn games ask children to read trajectories, wait their turn and celebrate a shared result. Jaques London has made these kinds of games since 1795, and the collections linked below draw directly on that tradition.
Explore Jaques London outdoor games for children and families Browse traditional games from Jaques London, est. 1795Double Dutch is genuinely safe when played on a flat, clear surface with ropes appropriate to the children's height, and with turners who understand their responsibility to slow or stop the moment a child loses their footing. A short, dry lawn, a paved patio or a smooth path all work well. Avoid gravel, slopes or surfaces with wet leaves.
Ellen Sandseter's research on risky play in early childhood reminds us that children need managed physical challenge to build resilience and accurate self-assessment of risk. A child who occasionally catches a rope and stumbles on soft grass is not in danger: they are learning. The role of the carer is to create the conditions for that learning to happen without avoidable hazard, not to remove the challenge entirely.
What to expect, session by session
Most toddlers will not jump cleanly through two turning ropes for many weeks or months. Expect sessions of watching, stepping over single stationary ropes, jumping in place beside the action, and joining in with the chant. All of this counts. Maria Montessori wrote of the child's need to repeat an activity until mastery arrives on its own timetable: skipping games honour exactly that principle.
Absolutely. At three, participation might mean standing beside the turners and chanting the rhyme, stepping over a single rope lying flat on the ground, or holding one end of a rope and helping to turn it while an adult provides the real motion. The child who turns the rope for others is absorbing the rhythm into their body long before they can produce it independently in the middle. Full jumping can come months later, and when it does, the groundwork will already be in place.
The minimum is three: two turners and one jumper. In practice, a group of four to six works beautifully, as it allows rotation without long waits that test a toddler's patience. That said, two adults and one child is a perfectly valid arrangement, with both grown-ups turning slowly and the child taking all the turns in the middle. The game scales generously to the group available.
Not when appropriately adapted. Brussoni and colleagues, whose work on outdoor risky play has shaped guidance in both the UK and Canada, consistently find that the benefits of active, physically demanding play outweigh the risks of minor bumps and stumbles when the environment is sensibly managed. For toddlers, the key adaptations are slow ropes, low arcs, an adult close by and plenty of grass underfoot. The game grows with the child: there is no need to rush to full-speed Double Dutch before the child is ready.
Skittles build throwing accuracy and weight judgement. Hoopla and ring-toss games develop the same arc-tracking spatial sense that a jumper uses to read incoming ropes. Simple ball games, whether rolling or gentle throwing, reinforce bilateral coordination and anticipatory timing. Jaques London's range of outdoor and traditional games covers all of these, drawing on two centuries of experience making play equipment that genuinely holds up to daily use by young children. Any game that asks a toddler to judge when to move, stop or throw is laying the groundwork for the beautiful, demanding rhythm of Double Dutch.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.