Courage is good for you: how to make your child a risk-taker
He watched the film to see exactly how the Indians do it: first build a tepee, then light a campfire. The tent also works well in the children's room. Then the primary school pupil drags wood in and fetches the matches. Luckily, the parents are there before the parquet floor burns.
Parents want to protect their children from dangerous situations throughout their lives. The worry that something could happen to their offspring is now causing many mums and dads to constantly circle above their child like little rescue helicopters so that they don't get into any risky situations.
While children used to roam around outside alone for hours on end, today they are often even kept under surveillance at home. Things like matches or knives are locked away in advance. In the case of the Indian tepee, this would have prevented a fire in the room. So everything is fine, isn't it?
«It depends,» says Ruth Beer, research associate for schools and families at the Accident Prevention Bureau (BFU), who tells the story of the children's bedroom campfire. The situation, age and abilities of the child determine how much parental protection it needs. She then asks a counter-question: «Why would an adult probably never start a fire in the middle of the home?»
How children develop risk competence
In the course of life, people develop what is known as risk competence. They learn to recognise danger (it's not just the firewood that will burn, but also the rest of the flat) and to assess it appropriately (that's why I can't just light the fire in the middle of the parquet floor).
And they learn to make individual decisions about the safest way to deal with dangers and adapt their own actions accordingly (the campfire is made outside - on a surface that does not immediately burst into flames). «Hazard awareness and self-control together result in risk competence,» says Beer.
Like almost everything in life, children first have to learn this kind of risk competence. «If a child can have a wide range of experiences, this happens to a certain extent automatically,» says Sonia Stürm from the Nutrition and Exercise Centre at the Office for Preventive Health Care in the canton of St. Gallen.
Through learning by discovery, through success and failure, children gradually learn to assess situations appropriately.
If a one-year-old has tripped over the doorstep several times, he knows that he better lift his legs in future. However, if you wrap a child in cotton wool and shield them from all possible dangers and risks - for example, by lifting them over the threshold every time - this automatic development will not succeed.
With teenagers at the latest, parents no longer have the chance to turn themselves into a rescue helicopter at any time.
Lu Decurtins, social pedagogue
«Unfortunately, we now live in an over-controlled world in which many parents are more cautious and risk-averse than they used to be,» says Lu Decurtins from his parent education events. The Zurich-based social pedagogue has dealt extensively with the topic of risk competence. He is particularly concerned about boys in puberty: «At this age, you can no longer prevent children from taking risks. And being brave is generally considered an important value for boys.»
By the time they reach their teens, parents no longer have the chance to turn themselves into a rescue helicopter and turn up at every party. And they don't have to if they have helped their children to develop good risk competence in the years before.
«I'll still get drunk as a teenager. But hopefully I'll do it with good friends in a consciously chosen environment and I'll also have thought about whether and how I'll get home afterwards,» says Decurtins.
For parents, it is also always important to approach topics that could harbour risks for young people with interest and an open mind. «If I simply categorically forbid smoking pot, for example, there can no longer be any dialogue about it. Only when young people feel understood are they willing to reflect on their own boundaries, communicate and discuss possible consequences together,» says Decurtins.
Clear rules and boundaries
Nevertheless, it remains the task of parents to set clear rules and boundaries in order to ensure that parties, holidays or ski trips with friends take place within an age-appropriate framework. «The safer the child's environment and surroundings are, the more freely they can move around in them,» says BFU employee Beer. For toddlers, for example, this means securing the stairs so that they can take their first steps unobserved. A kindergarten child can move around freely in a playground - as long as parents do not lift them up onto climbing frames that they are not yet able to climb themselves.
Primary school pupils are best off walking or cycling to school alone - after they have practised the route with them and know what to do if they are approached by a stranger. «And your teenage daughter should be allowed to go to the concert, but only accompanied by her friend and with appropriate arrangements,» says Decurtins.
In our everyday lives, it has become quite difficult for children to even get into risky situations.
Philippe Keller, Head of Training and Support at the Swiss Scout Movement
In all these situations, children gain new experiences that they need to develop further. Sometimes they will fall flat on their faces or have to push themselves to their limits. «But it is precisely this experience that strengthens their sense of self-efficacy and gives them self-confidence,» says Decurtins.
One organisation that has long been committed to helping children develop healthy self-confidence through freedom, adventure and campfires is the Scout Movement. «In our everyday lives, it has become quite difficult for children to even get into risky situations,» says Philippe Keller, Head of Training and Support at the Swiss Scout Movement.
Let your child climb trees
Playgrounds are secured with solid rubber mats, and fewer and fewer children have a wild forest on their doorstep. «And at school, some children no longer go on excursions to the water because no teacher wants to take responsibility for them,» says Keller.
He advises parents to buy their children a pocket knife at an early age and show them how to use it. Let them climb trees. And, of course, to make a campfire. Just not on the parquet floor.
