Teaching Risk Management: Child’s Play?

Playground (Photo credit: phalinn)

What is a sane and healthy level of risk when raising children?  How do we teach our kids to assess and manage risk without scaring the daylights out of either us or them in the process?  Where’s the balance?  Let’s go to the playground.

Think about the first time you took your little one to the playground and tried out a seesaw.  The little one had absolutely no about this piece of equipment, what it could do or what was about to come.  Picture what you (most likely) did next.

Parents often lift that small child and place her carefully on the high end of the apparatus.  We hold her there, mid-air, for a few seconds while she feels the thrill (and maybe a little bit of fear) that goes with being two feet tall and ‘flying’ five feet in the air.  She’s able to manage it because you’re standing there — between her and the ground.

Then, we stop.  She has had her introduction.  It was fun.  We quit while we’re ahead.  Enough for one day.

Fast forward to a time when that same child, now maybe six or seven years old, rides that seesaw like a surfboard, running from one end to the other and delighting in the loud CRASH that happens some time after she crosses the center of the board.

What has changed?

Her balance and coordination are better than when she was a toddler.    She has had more experiences experimenting with balance and gravity.  (It has been a long time since gravity outwitted her while trying to cross the living room floor!)

Part of knowing our kids means being aware of their abilities, strengths and fears.  As a proactive parent, I recognize that life is full of risks and that it is in the best interesest of my family to choose how and when to teach about it –at least as often as I can.

We teach risk management to our kids like we teach anything else — in small doses and matched to their age, skill-level and interests.  We send them to the end of a supermarket aisle to choose an item for the family shopping cart long before we sent them to the store.  What was ‘risk’ for a toddler is ‘baby stuff’ for a third grader.