"He was rising outside." A little girl told me about my son when she left the playground of a fast-food restaurant. My first instinct that I followed was to tell Tommy that we would no longer come here. This did not cause him much attention, but I continued to think about it later.
Pass by the obvious fact that I am responsible in this matter, being a father who did not control his 8-year-old in the gaming zone. This is about Tommy's behavior. I want my children to get along with other people to enjoy life, to obey the rules, to think for themselves ... but it occurs to me that the desire to obey the rules and think about myself should create a constant conflict.
It would be easy enough to focus on compliance with the rules. The rules are measurable, so accountability is pretty simple. However, if we achieve perfect success in teaching our children to abide by the rules, they will always depend on a system in which the rules are clear, fair and well followed. I preferred a model in which children use their best judgment and relate to others, as they would like to be treated. This works well in most situations, but, of course, it depends on children working under common sense, which is not guaranteed.
This is where indistinctness arises: Tommy probably knew that he was breaking the rule by climbing the outside of the playing space. However, he did no harm to anyone, which was obvious to him. I see that by behaving like this, he can encourage other children to do the same, and someone may suffer, or parents may be uncomfortable. I think I would very much like my son to be mistaken on the side of caution. “Forgive forgiveness, not permission” may be an impractical concept for teaching your children, but if they can already practice it with some refinement, it may be best not to discourage it.
Children learn something, and they discover their limits by testing them. If their only opportunities for playing in playgrounds designed by a lawyer, they will not learn very much. Usually these playgrounds offer a more aggressive game than their design. Playing outside or jumping is a way for children to have fun when the intended activities are too safe and sterile. The term of this behavior is “risk homeostasis”.
The risk of homeostasis describes the normal behavior of a person in relation to risk. To summarize, accidents do not decrease when you design things “safer”, they remain about the same. When roads expand, people move faster. As playgrounds become safer, children will find new ways to test their limits. I am not ready to destroy this instinct from my children. I will explain to Tommy why this behavior was appropriate in this situation, and expect him to make the right decisions in similar situations in the future.
Keeping in mind these things, I let my children and their friends walk on our newly frozen pond. The water in North Carolina rarely freezes to go further, so we were not sure what would happen. Our pond is only 3-4 feet deep in the center, though smaller at the sides. I was ready to take the children. They were delighted with the opportunity to walk on the ice; he cracked the cave in places, and they were able to experience their relative strength and weakness. They stomped on it, and sometimes their leg went away. No one entered, but we were ready for it.
Children learned something from experience, and I got something more valuable: when I tell them that something is too dangerous, they will take me seriously, because I do not tell them about it.
