Kit Meyer
Level 4 Valued Member
Andy Kirkpatrick | Risky Play
Not everyone may agree with this viewpoint
I agree with it. As a kid, I wandered off into some backwoods with my bike, alone, with no cell phone, and came back for dinner like it was nothing. So have billions of children in the past.
I've recently become caretaker of two boys, 5 and 7 years old. They are nuts. Their mom (my mother-in-law) is 100% disabled and diagnosed with severe anxiety. They must be monitored at all times. It's insanity. We had neighbors that moved in next door, with a 4 year old boy and 6 year old girl. Perfect! Potential playmates! Of course my mother-in-law forbids the boys talking to them since we "Don't know them". That made me angry. I asked "How can we know them if we don't ever meet them?" Granted, she has a psychological block to hurdle with anxiety, but those boys desperately want friends as much as I want them out of my house wrecking my things. They love their ipads, but deep down, they want to be rough & tumble boys.
I completely agree with the author of the article. I remember as a boy swinging as high as I can and letting go. Or riding my bike up to speed and jumping off. Without sounding crazy, I liked the way it hurt and I wanted to see how far I could go without hurting too much. It makes sense in a childhood development sense. Children don't know what hurts and what doesn't. This is why they have contradictory logic in behavior, like being terrified of getting down from a barstool to casually running in front of a freight train; they have no references in experience. Once they fall down or run into enough things, they can deduce what won't be a big deal to what could be fatal.