‘All children both need and want to take risks in order to explore limits, venture into new experiences and develop their capacities, from a very young age and from their earliest play experiences.’
Managing Risk in Play Provision: A Position Statement 2008
Hello again readers, its been a while!
I hope you enjoyed Josh’s 2 posts about reading and how beneficial it can be for our children! This week I thought I would discuss something a bit different. The idea of risk taking and why we shouldn’t wrap our little ones up in bubble wrap and allow them to fall over every now and again.
If you haven’t noticed already at Squirrel Lodge, we encourage lots of risk taking and managing. Sometimes this worries people. Do not worry your children are in safe hands, we do not allow children to walk around aimlessly with tools or to jump from dangerous heights! In this post I hope to show you why we do it and how beneficial it can be for your little ones.
Have you found yourself ever shout “be careful!” when your chid is playing? Possibly 100 times a day? This is because children are naturally curious and want to test ideas and boundaries that they know. They know what the world looks like from the ground, but they want to know how it differs when standing in a tree. They know want to experience what it is like to be a giant and see the world from a different perspective, to challenge their view and understanding. To learn many skills, we as adults take for granted such as walking, running and even eating requires taking risks and the possibility of getting hurt, but we encourage children to take these risks to enable them to learn and develop.
Most of the time children do not set out to hurt themselves or put themselves in a position that puts them at risk. Often, they end up in these positions as they do not understand the risks that can be associated with what they are doing or do not know the limit of their own abilities or the limit that their environment has.
Before going any further I just wish to clarify that I am not encouraging you to allow your children to take complete control of their safety. If a child is in immediate danger ( e.g. about to step into a road) then it is our role as carers to step in and ensure their safety, however if a child is in a situation that they are not in immediate danger but have the risk of danger ( for example climbing up the stairs or a tree) if they have the ability to then allow them to take that risk, as long as they are supervised and the risk is controlled then the opportunity for your child to learn far out ways the possibility to fall and scrape their knee.
So how do we do this and still ensure our children will not get hurt? For want of a better way to put this there isn’t a way. It is inevitable that our children will fall and scrape their knees and get bruises or cuts. It is a part of childhood (and for many adulthood!). We cannot wrap our children in cotton wool, if we do, we will end up limiting their possibilities and in turn their development.
So once again it comes down to our role as carers, adults and as those that have already had this experience to support our children in doing so. We can do this several ways.
Firstly, we must assess the situation. Is the child in immediate danger? If yes, then we need to step in to ensure the child’s safety. If they are not, then we can allow the risk to be taken ensuring we stay supervising and risk assessing continually. We also need to ask ourselves if this child has the ability to do the action associated to this risk, for example a toddler trying to go down a set of stairs, have they got the ability to be able to physically do so? If the answer is yes then we go ahead and help to control the risk, if the answer is no then they are putting themselves in immediate danger and we need to step in.
We can model risk assessing language. For example, a child has built a bridge on 2 crates using a piece of wood, but the wood is very wobbly! We can ask if they think it is safe, encourage them to test its safety with one foot or hand before putting their whole body on top of it. If the child still thinks it is safe, we can let them test with 2 feet. We can then suggest it looks unsafe as its not strong enough. We can then ask how we can make it stronger or safer. This cycle can the n continue until they are happy that it is safe and take the risk of balancing across the bridge, while having removed the main risks associated with original wobbly plank.
We can also be positive! We can encourage children to keep going, to persevere and do not give up. For example, a child may be trying to use a knife to chop food (of course by this point we have ensured the child can use the knife and is not putting themselves in immediate danger by having it). We have modelled how to use it safely and have modelled the risk assessing language as above, but the child is unsure. We can encourage them to try. We can encourage them to keep trying, we can build their confidence, explaining they are strong/independent and that they have got this!
So next time you see your little one going to take a risk, if they are not in immediate danger then perhaps encourage them to manage the risk and work out how to do it safely together. If we allow children to test their ideas and challenge what they believe then who knows what they will be able to achieve as they grow!
Keep your eyes peeled for next week where we will be discussing how beneficial letting your children ‘help’ at home can be.
I hope you enjoyed this post, please feel free to let us know if you liked it and what you would like to hear about in the future!
Terrie and the Squirrels xx
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