Why children should be given the room to take risks

A news story, which could have turned out tragically but didn’t, stuck with me this week. In rural Kentucky, a four-year-old boy was hiking with his parents when he slipped and fell, hitting multiple ledges before landing about 21 metres below. Miraculously, he was found alert and talking, and apart from a few scrapes, was “unscathed”, according to authorities.

I am so happy he is safe, and hope he got a lot of ice-cream afterwards. Also, this story says it all about toddlers. Call it the Multiple Ledges rule: at the exact time of life when we are most primed to take risks, our bodies are, for the most part, unbreakable. Obviously, avoiding accidents of any kind is a good idea, but this is not always possible when dealing with little people.

I am positive that the parents of this four-year-old had warned him many times to stay away from the edge of the cliff. He ventured there anyway – not because he wanted to be disobedient, but because his entire body was imploring him to.

The Multiple Ledges rule is more or less borne out in today’s parenting literature, which decrees that a child should be given the room to take risks and make mistakes as a means of developing his or her sense of self.

You see this at the playground, where helicoptering, or hovering over the toddler, is out and “refereeing”, in which the child’s actions are narrated as neutrally as possible, is in. (If you’re imagining a whole bunch of would-be David Attenboroughs describing their charges wrangling over a soccer ball, you’re not wrong.)

Assuming consistent love and support – this is not an argument for negligence – the occasional bump, scrape or bruise is now a badge of honour, a sign that a child has been given room to get into a little bit of trouble.

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A related idea is the cliché about the resilience of children. I don’t disagree, but the framing feels adult-centric. Isn’t it possible that what grown-ups define as negative or unfortunate events are sometimes processed in more complex and nuanced ways by kids? It’s pretty hard to answer this because most children are more inclined to talk about farts than feelings.

Nonetheless, here’s an example. My daughter was in the special-care nursery at the hospital for a time after she was born premature. This was, naturally, excruciating for her parents, who every night returned to a house which felt unbearably empty.