Are our children overprotected?
Remember back to your childhood days where you would challenge your brothers and sisters to climb to the highest point in the tree. Or maybe you would compete with your friend to do the craziest tricks on the trampoline which in hindsight were way too dangerous for a backyard trampoline. Did you go off exploring secret routes and secret havens where no adults were allowed (or even knew about)? Often you would be victorious achieving heights or lengths you never thought possible and yes, sometimes you would fail and other times you would fail miserably often resulting in cuts, scrapes and a good cry. But that was okay because it made you stronger and wiser and you knew better for next time.
It seems a world away from the child’s play of today. There are many reasons why whether it’s the reliance on technology, kids being busier than ever with jam-packed schedules of extracurricular activities and in general an increasingly risk-adverse society. Things we would have been considered paranoid or even ridiculous decades ago are the norm and in fact markers of good parenting. Kids are told not to climb trees and are under constant supervision. Cartwheels are banned at schools and a rough and tumble in the mud is discouraged. While it might be overprotectiveness, it’s also parents and loved ones responding to a society full of anxieties and worries where you aren’t encouraged to take risks.
Ellen Sandseter, a professor of early-childhood education at Queen Maud University College observed, studied and interviewed children on playgrounds in Norway. Her research found that children needed to experience danger and excitement. It didn’t mean they had to experience actual danger but the child had to feel like they were taking a risk.
“Children need to encounter risks and overcome fears on the playground,” Dr Sandseter concluded. She found children exploring new heights was an essential element of risky play.
“Children approach thrills and risks in a progressive manner, and very few children would try to climb to the highest point for the first time they climb. The best thing is to let children encounter these challenges from an early age, and they will then progressively learn to master them through their play over the years,” she said.
But sometimes children will fail and fall. While it’s certainly a distressing scene to see any injured child, studies have shown that playground tumbles rarely cause permanent damage, either physically or emotionally. In fact, children who are hurt in a fall before the age of 9 are less likely as a teenager to have a fear of heights.
Dr Sandseter concludes that paradoxically “our fear of children being harmed by mostly harmless injuries may result in more fearful children.”
Children need a way to experience and understand challenges around them. They need to be adventurous and daring and do things only a child would do. They need to make mistakes, hurt themselves and then learn from it. And when children take risks, in those moments of uncertainty, they are truly in charge of themselves – they make decisions and assess the level of risk they want to take and what they are comfortable with. They ask themselves “can I climb this high” or “am I strong enough” – they learn to know themselves, their abilities and their environment. An adventurous sense of play with risks – acceptable risks – let’s children acquire confidence through experience but also an awareness of their limits and boundaries. It is how they learn to be safe and it’s all part of developing those essential life skills.
While there are obvious times where you must step-in as the adult, research continuously shows that allowing appropriate risky play is key in children’s wellbeing and satisfaction. Those bumps and bruises (and the accompanying funny memories to retell) are after all a universal part of childhood. It’s something to consider as the next generation of young kids grows up before our eyes.
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While there’s nothing like learning first-hand through raising your own children, the world has certainly changed and so have approaches to child development. In this course, you’ll learn the different domains in which children develop, the belonging, being and becoming framework for understanding children’s developmental needs and positive forms of behaviour guidance.