Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do
Right after that last post, I find that. And I agree. So liability conscious, this culture tries too hard to keep children safe from everything. At the cost of their experience. I whittled when I was a kid, sharp knife, whatever wood came to hand. Didn't make anything, loved to carve down a stick to a splinter. Cut myself quite a lot, and took a perverse pride in it. No seatbelts in the Studebaker, the door popped open on the highway once, and my brother grabbed me. I had my first glimpse of mortality. My brother took old clocks apart. I always had sticks to throw around, from the tree in the back yard. Got a nice scalp gash from seeing how high straight up I could throw one. We had Jarts, those steel tipped lawn darts. Dropped a few on my toes. Learned about gravity.
I have a theory that the rage in "Extreme Sports" is that imperative to play with fire and gravity and speed, not learned when it would only have left a few scabs. Delayed until it will maim and kill. I have heard that in cultures that use open fires, children are not warned not to touch it. An early small burn does the job much more effectively. Saving from harm steals the lesson away.
8 comments:
Quite right.
I bite my tongue observing new parents coddling their chick: as though our species didn't survive the rainy season on the bare savannah or the high steppes for a hundred thousand years before the invention of blankets.
I recognize that it's important to keep the little ones alive, but it all feels like it's gone too far. And accidents will happen anyway, no matter how careful.
I try to find a good balance. Never sterilized things when she was bitty, never washed dropped things, and now she remains well when I get sick. Let her climb and fall, the result being an excellent sense of balance. Let her stick things in her mouth while on walks and at playgrounds, for her to discover that she didn't actually want to eat them. Let her run and bump and scrape and bang, hurt herself when I could have caught her. She brushes it off and moves on, careful where she's decided to be, pushing the edge where she has not.
There are limits I place, but they'll expand as she grows.
I do confess to being possibly over-protective at times, however. Much less lately.
I submit that handling and firing guns at a young age is a fantastic idea, as well.
Very cool. Loved the video, and I usually resist clicking on videos online unless they're very short. Thanks for posting this. It is similar to finding out that being an overzealous house cleaner isn't especially healthy.
yes yes yes
That was good. Fire was so lovely when we were kids. A little bit rule breaking too, of course, knowing we weren't supposed to be doing it...
Children, and people generally seem to be less litigiously protected here- fireworks openly sold from shelves at toddler head height, etc - than in the UK, but seem to behave better.
'Swallows and Amazons', the permission telegraph from father:'better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown.' Hard for parents to do sometimes doubtless.
From where I come from culturally familiarity with guns is a step too far though.
Thanks for this Z.
Having spent Christmas day on a river with among others, my niece and nephew(9 and 12) and canoed 12km with them (they led the way in their canoes) and watched as they lit the bbq and swam in the river and then on our rtn home got on their bikes (no helmets) and sped off to the beach, I have to agree. Let them spread their wings. Safe in the knowledge that parents ( and aunts and uncles) are always there for a little guidance and reasoning if things get tough.
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