You can achieve a usable lawn that isn't just grass by mixing in clover, dandelions, violets, etc and then mowing occasionally. And not every part of it needs to be "usable" either, so you can have a variety of spaces. I have a main area where my dogs play. I've started changing the corners and edges into vegetable gardens, fruit bushes, and I plan to turn the front yard into a prairie type landscape.

As far as critters, why not just let your kids experience it? If you live someplace with venomous critters, teach them how to notice and give a safe distance. In your home is sterile enough, so let the kids have something a little more wild outdoors.

Just watch out for the bees in the clover flowers, as we here all learned the hard way as kids.

(No grass without clover and daisies, they're honorably lawn here as well.)

Kids will enjoy anything. Playing hide and seek in a backyard jungle is just as fun as running around on grass, and for most people there is invariably a park nearby. And kids encountering critters and stinging insects is a part of growing up! If anything, children are too isolated from nature these days.

Agree, but ticks are no fun.

Indeed. We've brought this on ourselves, though, by pushing out predator species that eat the mice that carry the ticks and expanding their range with climate change.

Also agree. While insects stings are part of growing up, I think I only had a tick on me once as a child. Now the "tick check" is part of the bath routine for my kids... even when they stay in the mowed area of our lawn (out of the adjoining woods). I'm in Central PA, for reference.

That said, I chipped a big portion of the lawn for a berry patch/orchard and maintain the wild black raspberry and wineberry outside the wire. Current status: strawberry overload!

Nice!! I think I'm ~2 weeks out from strawberry time.

Depending on your zone, growing bamboo or letting the grassland to grow tall enough will attract them back.

Or, have something that will eat the ticks, like chickens. They come with their own problems, but they will also pay their way with pasture-raised eggs that are better than the cage-free stuff you get from stores.

You get them in the mowed areas as well.

Backyard chickens will love to eat tasty ticks.

As others have mentioned, clover can be a great substitute for grass that still allows your kids to play. You can mix in wildflowers along the edges or certain areas of the yard, and flowering shrubs that attract pollinators. Berry bushes can also be a great addition.

If you really wanna provide an educational experience for the kids, add butterfly host plants for butterfly/moth species that live in your area. I planted milkweed for Monarchs last year and it was a very rewarding experience to raise the caterpillars through the lifecycle with my preschool aged kids. This year I've planted a lot more milkweed, as well as dill (for Black Swallowtails).

I live in a neighborhood full of families and the number that actually use their yards for anything other than mowing is minimal. As for my own kids they seemed to have much more fun in the nearby woods than the yards.