About FindMyPlayground
Finding a playground shouldn't require detective work.
Parents shouldn't have to scroll through dozens of photos, guess whether “accessible” means a wheelchair-friendly route or just one ramp, or wonder whether “sensory-friendly” means calming and predictable or simply busy and overstimulating.
That uncertainty is especially hard for families raising children with autism, sensory sensitivities, mobility differences, elopement risk, communication challenges, or younger children who need close supervision. It's also hard for grandparents looking for shade in July, families relocating to a new city, and anyone planning a birthday party who'd like to know in advance whether the place has bathrooms.
We built this directory to make those decisions easier.
Who built it
Mark Murphy is the founder and CEO of Leadership IQ, a research and training firm that has spent two decades studying how people make decisions and translate complex information into useful action. He's a Forbes Senior Contributor and a New York Times bestselling author. His research has appeared in publications including the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report, and the Washington Post. He's been a featured guest on CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC's 20/20, Fox Business News, CNN International, and NPR. His books include Hiring for Attitude, Hundred Percenters, Team Players, and Managing Narcissists, Blamers, Dramatics, and More Difficult People, among others. The same approach he applies to executive research, building from large datasets rather than anecdote, shapes how this directory categorizes and describes playgrounds.
Andrea Burgio-Murphy, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and autism specialist. She's spent decades working with children and families navigating autism, sensory processing differences, ADHD, anxiety, and the day-to-day logistics of inclusive parenting. Her most recent book is Autism Book for Early Intervention: A Parent's Playbook for Guiding Young Kids with Autism to Their Full Potential Using Techniques for Communication, Play, Motor Skills, and Emotional Growth. She's the clinical voice behind the inclusive section of this site. Her methodology, published in full at /inclusive/methodology/, defines what we mean when we describe a playground as wheelchair-accessible, sensory-friendly, autism-supportive, or any of the other terms that can mean very different things to different families. It's also what keeps us honest. She's the reason we don't label a playground “inclusive” just because it has one ramp.
What we do differently
We look beyond the broad labels. Instead of treating “inclusive” as a yes-or-no claim, we break the playground experience into the details that actually matter to families: shade, surfaces, fencing, bathrooms, parking, sensory load, toddler separation areas, wheelchair routing, quieter retreat spaces, crowd patterns, supervision lines of sight, and the different ways children can participate in play.
Each listing draws on three sources. Google Maps gives us the structured baseline: location, hours, photos, and what people who've actually visited say in their reviews. AI extraction surfaces specifics buried in those reviews, like which playgrounds are fenced, which have splash pads, which get crowded on weekends, which have shade. And for the inclusive section, Andrea's clinical framework guides which playgrounds get featured and how they're described.
No directory can promise a playground will be perfect for every child. Children's needs vary. The same child may need different things on different days, and a playground that works in October may not work in July. But better information helps parents make better choices.
Where we're starting
We're launching with Georgia and expanding through the Southeast (Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama) before going national. Starting regional means we can apply real attention to each city before scaling. Coverage in Atlanta is dense and current. Coverage in Boise is currently zero. We'll get there.
If you've spotted an error or know a playground we should add, we want to hear from you.