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In this series on overprotective parents, we\u2019ve taken a nuanced look at the phenomenon\u2019s origins<\/a>, explored the question of whether the world is a more dangerous place now<\/a> than it was several decades ago (it\u2019s not), and delved into the risks that arise when we don\u2019t<\/em> allow children to do risky things<\/a> (there are many).<\/p>\n Today, we conclude the series with a discussion of how parents can find a happy medium in raising their kids: allowing them enough experience with risk to foster the development of the kind of competence, confidence, and courage they\u2019ll need to become well-rounded, flourishing adults, while still prioritizing their safety and well-being.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a tough line to walk, but it is possible.<\/p>\n The essential key to finding a \u201cgolden mean\u201d between safety and risk ultimately comes down to this: rather than safeguarding children from <\/em>risk, you teach them to grapple with<\/em> risk.<\/p>\n Doing so involves managing three dynamics: 1) exposing your children to controlled<\/em> risk, 2) preparing your kids for risk, instead of entirely preventing it, and 3) maintaining a \u201cfree range\u201d parenting mindset.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s talk about how to get a handle on each of these dynamics in turn.<\/p>\n In her study<\/a> on the role of risk in childhood, Ellen Sandseter posits that exposure to risk plays an essential role in childhood development — \u201cinoculating\u201d kids against excessive fear and fostering the kind of resilience that allows them to survive and thrive into adulthood.<\/p>\n Yet she observes that children don\u2019t need to actually face serious risks to garner these benefits; they just have to participate in things that feel<\/em> like risks.<\/p>\n What this means for parents is that rather than going to extremes — eliminating all risk, or throwing children willy-nilly into situations that could cause them real injury or harm — a middle path is possible: encouraging children to take controlled<\/em> risks.<\/p>\n Assessing and managing situations to allow for controlled risk requires parents to ask themselves a few questions:<\/p>\n The answers to these questions can then be used to find a balance between risk and safety:<\/p>\n As you can see, creating an environment of controlled risk for your children largely comes down to eliminating risks they can\u2019t handle on their own, and teaching them to manage those which they can. How exactly to do the latter, it\u2019s what we\u2019ll unpack next.<\/p>\n When parents are overly protective of their children, they essentially outsource all of their offspring\u2019s risk management to themselves. The operating assumption is that mom and dad will always be around to keep them from harm, but of course this won\u2019t be the case (hopefully).<\/p>\n Rather than making kids dependent on you to keep them safe, prepare them to face and manage risks themselves. This doesn\u2019t mean totally shoving them into things without a safety net, but rather employing what Gever Tulley calls<\/a> a \u201cscaffolding\u201d of \u201cplanning, practicing by steps, and taking reasonable precautions.\u201d The robustness of this scaffolding should be adjusted to your children\u2019s age and level of maturity, and then progressively withdrawn as they gain confidence and competence and become able to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n Here are some of the keys to engaging in this process in a way that will not only benefit your children, but allay your own anxiety: <\/strong><\/p>\n Introduce risk in graduated phases<\/strong>. The first step in allowing your kids to engage in a \u201crisky\u201d activity is to identify what exactly the risks are. What is it that worries you about letting your kids do a certain activity? How realistic are these risks and worries?<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve identified the risks of an activity, you can figure out how to mitigate them, and alleviate your concerns in ways that 1) are proportional to the chances of the risk, 2) still maintain the feeling of risk (excitement, thrill, fear), and 3) increase your child\u2019s competence and autonomy.<\/p>\n In Free Range Kids<\/em><\/a>, Lenore Skenazy suggests what is arguably the best way accomplish all 3 aims: introduce it in graduated steps in which you teach your kid about any dangers inherent to an activity and then progressively decrease your guidance and supervision. Here are a few examples of what this could look like:<\/p>\n Crossing the street:<\/p>\n Walking to the bus stop:<\/p>\n Biking around the neighborhood:<\/p>\n Instead of saying \u201cbe careful\u201d say \u201cpay attention.\u201d <\/strong>I picked up this great tip from Richard Louv\u2019s Last Child in the Woods<\/em><\/a>. Constantly saying \u201cbe careful\u201d paints the world as an inherently perilous, overly dangerous place, and ingrains a cautious mindset into kids. In contrast, \u201cpay attention\u201d (or \u201cwatch what you\u2019re doing\u201d) encourages children to be more aware of their body and their surroundings — a mindset we want our kids to cultivate whether they\u2019re doing risky things or not.<\/p>\n The world doesn\u2019t need more careful children — it needs more wise, perceptive, brave<\/em> ones.<\/p>\n Treat your kids like apprentices<\/strong>. The modern phenomenon of children spending most of their time in close proximity to their parents isn\u2019t uniquely modern. Before the industrial revolution, children also spent their days side-by-side with mom and dad. But whereas parents now stand as passive witnesses — picture-taking recess monitors — to their children\u2019s play, parents and children formerly worked<\/em> together. The children were undergoing an informal (and sometimes formal) apprenticeship with these grownups, learning the skills and knowledge they\u2019d need to someday thrive as adults.<\/p>\n It\u2019s time to bring back this apprenticeship concept. There\u2019s nothing inherently wrong with spending a lot of time with your kids — in fact, it can be quite a good thing — but such time can be put to more beneficial use (both for you and for them). It\u2019s not possible or desirable for most parents to take their kids to work every day, but you\u2019re probably already spending most of your off-hours with your children; rather than giving up hobbies, and doing chores when the children go to bed, use these hours to engage in such activities, letting your kids tag along to learn more about your pastimes, as well as some practical skills.<\/p>\n Take your kids hiking with you, and teach them about the forest\u2019s dangers and joys. Lift weights together, and instruct them in proper form while inculcating a love for fitness<\/a>. Let them help you rake leaves or make dinner (including using — gasp! — a sharp knife) even if their \u201chelp\u201d is initially marginal if not detrimental to your efforts.<\/p>\n Treating your children as apprentices will not only teach them important life skills, but even indirectly allow you to become a more hands-off parent. I\u2019ve wondered that in becoming so all-consuming, to the dropping of any outside\/adult interests, overprotective parenting hasn\u2019t actually compounded its own cycle of hyper-interaction and dependence: children not only become reliant on parents, but parents become dependent on their children as the only friends and interest in their lives. As a result, parents perhaps subconsciously deepen and extend their efforts to keep their children close — past the point where they\u2019ve become old enough to start striking out on their own — out of the fear that once their children become independent and leave, their own lives will be empty.<\/p>\n So, get some hobbies and interests<\/a>, mom and dad, and show your kids, and yourselves, that you\u2019re fully-formed human beings, apart from your role as parents.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t intervene in children\u2019s squabbles and activities<\/strong>. One of the negative results of the constant supervision attendant to overprotective parenting, is that mom and dad are now always around to mediate the frequent disputes that arise between kids at play. \u201cDad, Tyler\u2019s not sharing the football!\u201d Then Dad steps in: \u201cOkay, Tyler, you\u2019ve had the football long enough, please give it to Henry now.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of why unstructured play is so beneficial to child development, is that kids have to learn how to negotiate and compromise. Parents of course can teach them the sound principles of give and take, but unless they practice<\/em> it on their own, they\u2019ll grow up believing that whenever they feel themselves harmed or wronged by someone else, they\u2019re a victim whose only recourse is to appeal to a third party for help (the fruits of this dynamic are certainly being played out in today\u2019s culture). If you witness children having a dispute, try to let them work it out themselves; better yet, try to be MIA from their arena of play and negotiation altogether.<\/p>\n A similar principle applies to your supervision of children doing their own \u201cdangerous\u201d DIY projects. As part of introducing risk in graduated steps and allowing your kid to be an apprentice, you should certainly supervise your child\u2019s first outings with handling tools, building things, etc. But you should back off as soon as possible, letting them work things out on their own, and offering counsel or grabbing something only if they\u2019re physically incapable of doing so themselves or in immediate danger. As Tulley advises: \u201ctry acting like a robot that does only what you are told. Be the big, strong, or dexterous hands that they need, and, most important, let them fail. Then help them figure out why they failed and how to work around it — even if it means starting over.\u201d Take a different approach to preparing your children to deal with \u201cstranger danger\u201d (starting with dropping the phrase \u201cstranger danger\u201d). <\/strong>When it comes to mitigating the already minuscule risk of every parents\u2019 greatest fear — child abduction — we\u2019ve all generally been going about it the wrong way.<\/p>\n So says Ernie Allen, head of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who told Skenazy in an interview that part of his work is to \u201cdebunk the myth of stranger danger,\u201d in order to teach kids a more reasonable, effective, proactive, and in fact safer<\/em> way to deal with folks they don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n Typically, the only thing we teach children about strangers is that you should never, ever talk to them. But as Allen points out, this blanket proscription \u201ceffectively remov[es] hundreds of good people in the area who could be helping them.\u201d Instead, Skenazy relays, Allen teaches children:<\/p>\n 1. Most adults are good. Thus a better phrase to teach kids than \u201cNever talk to strangers,\u201d is \u201cNever go off with strangers.\u201d<\/p>\n And then, you actually spell out what that means. Tell kids to ignore the lures a predator could use to get them in the car — candy or an empty leash that supposedly belongs to the dog he\u2019s looking for. Tell them not to go with a stranger even if he says something nice, or that he needs help, or that their parents sent him to pick them up. And tell kids to raise a ruckus and high tail it out of there if someone tries to get at them.<\/p>\n Allen reports that in cases where a predator tried to abduct a child, but failed, the kids got away \u201cOverwhelmingly, by either running away or fighting back: yelling, kicking, pulling away, or attracting attention.\u201d He thus teaches and has kids practice the things that can actually reduce their chances of being kidnapped:<\/p>\n 1. Throwing their hands in front of them like a stop sign. Inculcating this kind of mindset, and giving children this kind of training, helps them narrow the focus of danger instead of globalizing it to everyone, everywhere, and empowers kids to more confidently navigate the world, and their interactions with people. Perhaps just as importantly, giving kids proactive preparation allows parents to feel more confident with letting their children roam and range beyond the confines of the backyard.<\/p>\n Knowing how to balance risk and safety in your kids\u2019 lives is one thing; continually putting these principles into practice is another. It\u2019s easy to let the very visceral fear (however irrational) of something bad happening to your children derail your efforts at letting them grow up \u201cfree range.\u201d Keeping the following mindset essentials at the front of your mind will help:<\/p>\n Make it a core part of your parenting philosophy.<\/strong> Allowing your kids greater independence is not something you\u2019ll be successful at if you just casually think about it and largely go with the flow; as Tim Gill observes in No Fear<\/em><\/a>, \u201cThere are significant forces pushing parents, professionals, and voluntary and community agencies towards risk aversion. Where people succeed in resisting these forces it is because they have an explicit philosophy, ethos, or set of values about the role of risk, experiential learning, and autonomy in children\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n If you want to raise \u201cfree range\u201d kids in today\u2019s cautious society, you\u2019ll need to truly believe in the value of doing so, and intentionally make that belief central to your parenting philosophy.<\/p>\n Keep the stats concerning child danger in mind<\/a>.<\/strong> People often say that data has no effect on fear, because stats are based on reason, while fear often is not. It\u2019s true that people irrationally believe that the world has gotten more dangerous when it hasn\u2019t, and that the risk of a child being kidnapped is significant when it\u2019s actually miniscule. And it\u2019s true that these fears reside in the lower, \u201creptilian\u201d parts of our brains rather than our higher faculties. But, I can honestly say that learning that I\u2019d have to leave my kids unattended outside for 750,000 years for it to be statistically likely for them to be abducted has<\/em> made it easier for me to loosen up my formerly constant mode of supervision.<\/p>\n The next time you insist on driving your kid to school because letting them walk is too dangerous, remember that not only does he or she have a 40X greater risk of dying as a passenger in a car than being kidnapped or killed by a stranger, but that half of children who are hit by cars near schools are struck by the very parents who drop them off!<\/p>\n Statistics won\u2019t cure your anxiety, but when the 24\/7 news cycle makes childhood tragedy seem way more salient and frequent than it actually is, they will help alleviate it; it\u2019s okay to still worry, just work on keeping the worry in proportion to the danger.<\/p>\n Use history to keep things in perspective.<\/strong> Up through the early 20th century, children, even very young ones, worked 12 hours a day in mines and factories, and hawked newspapers on grimy street corners. There\u2019s nothing romantic about such child labor — unlike the largely imagined dangers of today\u2019s world, such work held real risk for kids. But contemplating the past can help you realize that children are capable of far more autonomy, risk, and responsibility than we currently allow them.<\/p>\nThe 3 Keys to Balancing Safety and Risk in Raising Your Kids <\/u><\/h3>\n
1. Create an Environment of Controlled Risk<\/h3>\n
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2. Aim for Complete Preparation Rather Than Total Protection<\/h3>\n
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\n2. There are a few bad ones.
\n3. Most normal adults don\u2019t drive up and ask for help.
\n4. If they do, or if they bother you in any other way, you can ask any other nearby adult for help.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n2. Screaming at the top of their lungs, \u201cNo! Get away! You\u2019re not my dad!\u201d
\n3. Running like hell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n3. Maintain a \u201cFree Range\u201d Parenting Mindset<\/h3>\n