Creating a safe place for risk

We have to risk physically. We have to risk emotionally and we have to risk spiritually and spiritual risk is more to me, getting to know the spirit of other people. That’s a risk we have to take. You know there’s evidence that children who don’t risk rarely have ever become fluent readers. People are always worried about that. But reading is a risk. You have to take a chance on a word, but that has to be in your world every day. Does that mean that I want kids to get hurt? No, I mean a skinned knee is okay. I mean I don’t want to do that but there’s a natural thing there but we’ve become so frightened of kids getting hurt for any reason, even emotionally.

Things to think about

How can you allow children to risk intellectually?
How can you allow children to risk emotionally?
How can you allow children to risk spiritually?
How can you allow children to risk physically?

Highlights from Playful Wisdom
by Michael Mendizza featuring Bev Bos and Joseph Chilton Pearce

Corporate Exploitation of Children and Parents
It breaks my heart to see the propaganda. The Number One On-Line Anything for Children Age Two complete with college cap and diploma. A happy, smiling fake mouse magically appeared signing off from Facebook. How many hits? 892,469 likes and 50,017 talking abouts. How many young parents have been lured by Baby Einstein, early is better, screen time is educational, get Junior off to a good, no, the best possible start to keep up with the neighbors and the dumb-down standards, competing for that coveted position at the XYZ Preschool, hoping she will make the cut. Content is NOT the issue. Five, seven- and ten-year-old children will benefit from spending as little screen time as possible during these critical developmental years. If a child can learn to stand on two legs and speak his or her mother tongue, even multiple languages, without formal training, the two most complex tasks they will ever master in their life, and accomplish this and a billion other complex challenges in thirty-six months, whatever they are doing “academically” in preschool and kindergarten, which is completely out of pace with nature’s billion-year curriculum, is completely misplaced. Schooling, especially very early schooling not based on authentic play is conditioning, behavior modification, conformity training driven by a desperate need to win approval. All of the so-called screen-based educational programs justify their commercial profits on the same assumptions that drive compulsory schooling. We have been deeply conditioned to believe that forced schooling enhances a child’s true development. The golden rule is—and I quote from an invitational symposium attended by world-class computer, media and early childhood specialists: “the less screen time prior to age eleven, the better.” That includes dumb-phones, tablets, computers and televisions. That’s right. Less is best.

Another thing that there has to be is an element of risk. You have to risk intellectually. We have to risk socially. Getting to know new people. We’ve got to take that chance. We have to risk physically. We have to risk emotionally and we have to risk spiritually and spiritual risk is more to me, getting to know the spirit of other people. That’s a risk we have to take. You know there’s evidence that children who don’t risk rarely have ever become fluent readers. People are always worried about that. But reading is a risk. You have to take a chance on a word, but that has to be in your world every day. Does that mean that I want kids to get hurt? No, I mean a skinned knee is okay. I mean I don’t want to do that but there’s a natural thing there but we’ve become so frightened of kids getting hurt for any reason, even emotionally. We’re always there to protect them, that they’re not able to do anything then. This is the most natural thing in the world you can do. I say to adults in workshops sometimes, how many of you did things that your parents still don’t know? Everybody raises their hand. They understand that there was that. Maybe it’s that kind of remembering that makes them overly cautious about their own child but that has to be there. I know that my children have done things that I don’t know about. Does that mean I want kids to get hurt? No. But that element of risk has got to be there. I’ve got to risk getting to know you. I’ve got to risk doing the things that make my world bigger.