5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do
Are we too concerned about safety when it comes to our kids?
That may seem like a crazy question. But let me rephrase it: have we protected our kids too much?
Putting the question that way gives us more to think about. Because although it’s hard for us to admit, kids actually need struggle. They need to learn by making mistakes. They need to develop the grit to overcome disappointment and failure.
Why? Because life is hard, filled with challenging endeavors, and will inevitably bring disappointment and failure, and if we don’t learn the skills to manage these things as children, we’re likely to have great difficulty in adulthood. In a sense, it’s a matter of struggling as children in relatively safe environs or struggling the rest of our life when and where the results are far more serious.
Moreover, lots of ordinary brain development depends on challenge, struggle, and even failure to occur. Mistakes teach. Doing something dangerous edifies. And tremendous challenges stretch us to be more than we can be.
In this 10 minute TED Talk, Gever Tulley invites us to consider “5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do.” A software engineer by day, Tulley is also the co-founder of The Tinkering School, a week-long summer kids where kids go to do the things their parents don’t let them: play with power tools, take things apart to see how they work, build stuff with no particular value, and more. He’s a big believer that we learn best by doing, and while you may quibble with one or more of his invitations, given the challenges that face us as a nation and world, his larger point that we need to train a generation of problem-solvers is hard to dispute.
Tulley’s talk represents just a sliver of his larger book, 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do)
Note: If you are receiving this post by email, you may need to click here to watch the video.
I agree that our youth should experience these “dangerous” things especially when you are there to supervise and provide proper safety training. We take our youth group camping every fall and I am amazed by the genuine interest of starting and maintaining a fire (burning things), chopping wood (sharp tools), cooking food over a fire, and climbing trees. I grew up knowing and doing these things but have realized that many of our youth (particularly in the city) never experience them.
Developing curiosity. Being present to our children as they explore the mysteries…. Yep! That’s our job as parents. Good foundation for faith exploration, of course.