A game of jeopardy It’s hard not to wrap your children in cotton wool and protect them from potential harm, but letting them explore and understand risk is essential to their development. By Lily Canter A PARENT’S NATURAL instinct is to protect their child and it can become second nature to automatically issue warnings such as “be careful” and “don’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself”. But allowing children to assess risks for themselves is a crucial part of their physical, social and emotional development from a very early age. And despite immense feelings to the contrary, it is beneficial rather than irresponsible to allow your children to take risks. By allowing them to do something slightly dangerous you are developing their survival instinct and lowering the risk of them seeking potentially fatal thrills elsewhere. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has recognised for a number of years that risky play enables children to understand their abilities and prepares them for the realities of the world in which we live. In 2012, HSE chairperson Judith Hackitt blogged on the topic of outdoor play, making the bold statement that we should “let our children take a risk” referring back to her own adventurous childhood. She added: “If you fell out of a tree, it hurt. But it taught you either what not to do next time, or that tree climbing was not for you. It gave you a healthy respect for the physical world around you, what risks you could reasonably take and what to do differently next time.” Fear of litigation and the ‘compensation culture’ has been the driving force behind the over-protection of children, but the HSE now states that accidents and mistakes will happen during play and anxiety around prosecution should not be blown out of proportion. In fact the pendulum has now swung so far the other way that being over-protective is now a form of emotional abuse under the latest safeguarding children policy, as it is
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