By Darla Steiner
The world is a wondrous place that can also be filled with real danger, especially for young children who have yet to learn how to navigate its pitfalls. Knowing this, the adults in children’s lives often seek to protect them from every foreseeable peril and downfall by removing all types of risks, sometimes even from risks that are at multiple degrees of separation from the actual situation. Just short of strapping a helmet on our children and wrapping them in bubble wrap when dressing them each day, we adults are guilty of creating sterile, predictable, artificial environments for our children in order to keep them safe from harm. We do this out of genuine love and care of course, however, we are also often operating out of fear. Protecting children from all possible harm poses its own serious risks of preventing children from ever learning how to sense and manage real danger for themselves, and, ultimately, replaces one set of risks for another.
This is not to say that adults are always misguided in their approach of removing risks of endangerment for children, especially for potential harm that they are too young and naïve to intuit on their own. For example, it is often necessary to “baby proof” a home by moving dangerous items, such as sharp objects and toxic substances, out of reach of a child who has begun to crawl and walk. At some point, though, that toddler will reach an age where he or she will need to learn how to safely handle the sharp objects and toxic substances. It will no longer serve the child to be kept away from these items. In fact, as long as the child who is capable of understanding remains ignorant of the potential dangers the items pose and is denied the opportunity to learn about them, the greater the actual danger these items pose to that child.
Because it is not always clear when a child is “ready” to handle a certain risk, nor can we always predict when a child may become exposed to a real danger, we need to intentionally provide opportunities for children to take small risks so that they may begin to grasp the complexities of appropriate responses to tricky situations. We start by first clarifying for ourselves, and then helping children discern the difference between a risk and a hazard. A hazard is something that can cause harm.
A risk is the chance, high or low, that any hazard will actually cause harm to someone. Nearly anything can be a potential hazard under certain circumstances, but the level of actual risk for danger can vary greatly. We must assess, and, in turn, teach children to assess levels of risk associated with any hazard. This may mean that we do not necessarily remove the hazard, especially if it poses a risk that can be managed by the child with guidance. According to Cam Collyer, program director at Canadian non-profit Evergreen, “Risk has become a bad word. We need to start discussing its benefits. Everything pleasurable in childhood associated with a developmental stage comes with a risk. Learning is associated with risk.” A child cannot learn about risk by being sheltered from it.
Our Nature Classroom is an environment where young children can practice healthy risk taking. Here, children can run, climb, jump, throw, race, balance, hang, dig, and play as children naturally want to do anyway, without being told those behaviors are not permitted because they are too dangerous. The risk associated with outdoor play isn’t a bad thing. A child can learn their way through the motor planning skills necessary for successfully jumping from a tree stump. The skinned knees, bumps, bruises, and other minor abrasions that might result from a child actively climbing up and jumping from the stump repeatedly are a trade-off for having mastered this skill.
Since we often discourage children from being active because of risk factors we associate with the running, jumping, climbing, wrestling, and racing they choose to engage in, we are also putting them at greater risk for other problems, such as obesity and other physical and mental health issues. By being hyper-sensitive to risk taking in early childhood, adults may ultimately make children susceptible to lifelong consequences.
Before we put limits on children’s behaviors for the sake of keeping them safe, it is important that we assess the level of risk involved in what they are doing. Are we giving them plenty of opportunities to manage low risk activities on their own? Have we taught them how to safely engage in a variety of risky activity? Have we helped them brainstorm ways they might problem solve to modify the activity if the level of risk becomes too high? Life is fraught with hazards and uncertainty. It is our responsibility to teach children that risk is not just something to be feared or avoided, but can be a carefully considered venture that helps us continually grow and learn.
