Tonight we biked around the neighborhood. When I say we, I really mean my daughter, since I was madly running after the bike. The neighbors looked out of their windows and watched us as we went weaving down the streets of our townhouse complex. My daughter was a little perplexed. “Why are they all so excited?” she asked. I explained that to many of us, riding a bike was a big deal, like a car for kids. It meant freedom for us as kids.
My daughter is not a risk-taker. Actually, I suspect that I was a similar sort of child, and I know that her father was not a risk-taking child at all. I’m a very different adult, though. I’m not irrationally risk-taking, but send me on a trip to a new place, give me an experience like scuba or hang-gliding and I am all for it. I adore the new.
Last month, I went to a talk on early childhood education and play-based learning. The speaker was Beverly Bos, an educator who is internationally known for her work as an advocate for traditional childhood. I’m not talking childhood in starched shirts here. I’m talking the kind of childhood many of us may have had: exploring outdoors for the entire day, coming in only for dinner. Or perhaps this is the childhood that our parents had, since even in our generation things were becoming more restrictive.
Like many parenting authors I know, Bos speaks out in favor of risk. Children need to risk to learn, she says. Imagine the baby who is taking his first steps. He must risk falling down over and over again in order to learn how to walk. We don’t place him in a padded room to practice. Now think of the child that your preschooler will become, learning how to read at home or at school. She must risk making mistakes every time she sounds out a word, but risks are necessary if you’re going to learn how to read.
Bos argues for the risks that our children take every day – the opening up of boundaries, the wandering around the neighborhood or taking social negotiation into their own hands, with a little backup from parents if required. She thinks that we put too little faith in our children’s ability to deal with situations, and so do I. We must street-proof and life-proof our children, but ultimately they need to learn how to venture forth into a risky world, and taking small risks is part of this process.
(Image courtesy of klsmith77 at stock exchange)