“So risk is an interesting, interesting thing when it comes to children. Because we want children to take the necessary risks they need to take in order to grow and learn without being a child that takes risks that put them in harm’s way serious harm’s way.
But we’ve got to have this balance. And we’ve got to teach children skills to keep themselves safe while taking risks. Not only in in a play on a playground, but emotionally and socially, socially, it’s risky to walk up to somebody and say, Hey, can I join your game because they could say no. And then you got to handle that…”
Podcast Transcript
At school today, one of our little guys, I think he’s 10, or 11, was having absolute fun on the playground. They were chasing each other. And he hasn’t done this in a while. He’s quite a frail little boy. And he’s been struggling with his self esteem and feeling like he’s worthy.
And this last week, we’ve changed a couple of things, and his whole mood has changed. And he was running and loving it. And he forgot to look around or forgot to look up and he ran straight into a tree, which of course, hurt.
So we’ve got to play this really carefully, because we’ve just got him engaged and enjoying life. And it would be so easy to over protect him at this point, and make his life really small again. But we’ve also gone to acknowledge that it really hurts and he has been hurt, and he needs to be attended to.
So to find the right words, and the right behavior from a teacher’s point of view is really vital. And to pass that message on to the parent, when she comes to fetch her son is equally vital, because we don’t want to slide him back to his old patterns of behavior where he doesn’t want to take any risks.
So risk is an interesting, interesting thing when it comes to children. Because we want children to take the necessary risks they need to take in order to grow and learn without being a child that takes risks that put them in harm’s way serious harm’s way.
But we’ve got to have this balance. And we’ve got to teach children skills to keep themselves safe while taking risks. Not only in in a play on a playground, but emotionally and socially, socially, it’s risky to walk up to somebody and say, Hey, can I join your game because they could say no. And then you got to handle that.
So we want children to be in a mindset of being self assured enough to move into a risky situation with some level of confidence, not only to move into that situation, but to handle it, if it doesn’t go well. And also to handle it if it does go up.
There he is running and playing and really enjoying this new freedom he’s feeling and bam, he slams right into a tree. And I chuckled because I think ah, universe, he just gave him something he’s, we’ve been working to get for him for a long time.
What is the tree? What is the lesson, and the lesson that I want to share is that taking risk, and being hurt in that risk, the hurt is not the reason to stop risking the hurt is part of the risk.
And part of the skill development so that you can can continue to take risks, and expand your life and your skills and your repertoire and your emotional abilities and your social sphere, that the tree is part of it, the tree isn’t there to stop us from Play and experimenting, it is part of play and experimenting.
So we have such today we had such an a beautiful opportunity to use the right words to show the right amount of compassion, and in that compassion to not pull him back to being small and not take him back into that world. But to keep that door open for him.
And there’s a line I’ve been using for years that comes out in various ways. But basically, when somebody gets hurt, playing something doing something interesting, like they never went on the slide before now they’re gonna slide or like today’s incidence in front where he was running and then ran into the tree, or they haven’t gone on the swing before and they fall off is to focus on this beautiful thing that they did and not worry so much about what went wrong.
Last year, we had one of our older boys, he was 12 I think at the time, and on this tiles outside and the towels are relatively slippery. So we’d ask them to be very careful or to walk off the tiles and then we’ll put some non slip, um, tape on so everything was really handled well but he loved to run it on a particular spots with his shoes on when it was wet and slide.
And he’s a strong boy and he’s a tall boy and robust boy and he was doing it really, really well. And he did it for days and days and days. And in fact a couple of people did it. But one day, he had a dry spot and his feet stuck and he fell forward and slammed his head on the floor and it was a huge gash, I think he got about seven stitches, and he has a scar.
And we could have taken this two ways we could have shut down the game, Ban children from playing, put extra tape everywhere so that it’s never slide, he’s never slippery for anybody. Or we could have looked at this perspective and said, well, for days and days, if not weeks and weeks, he was perfectly capable of doing this.
And there is a risk to it, because there’s a risk of slipping and hurting yourself. And his lips, and he hurt himself quite quite significantly. But all the other days he didn’t. And while we do want to prevent these big falls, that was quite a big thing that we needed to manage very fast.
And we needed to help him very quickly. Obviously, we want to have that kind of response time. But I don’t want to turn that into a rule that says now you can’t. Because for so many days and weeks before that, he was perfectly capable of doing it. And the same could be said for things like driving, if you’ve been driving for the last 10 years, and then you have a terrible accident.
It doesn’t mean to say you should stop driving. Because driving is inherently dangerous. And being a kid on a playground is inherently dangerous. So today, this little guy was able to keep his sense of humor. He was given a whole bunch of new emotions to feel that Wow, that must really hurt. And you must be feel very whatever you feel and giving him not giving him the words.
But where do you feel the pain in your body? In my head? Okay. Were you having fun before that? Yes. How did the tree get in your way? I wasn’t looking. Okay. Do you it was your headstall on your body? Oh, yes, it is. Is there blood? Yep. Is have we given you a pasta? Yep, that has been sorted. How did you feel before you hit the tree is having so much fun.
And really making sure that the narrative that they sit with is as balanced narrative, rather than I took a risk and look what happened, let me make myself smaller. And this is really, really important for children who have learning difficulties, and are neurodiverse. Because we don’t want them to step down a path that makes their life smaller, more contained, less and less people less activities, we don’t want to package them up in cotton wool any more than we need to, they already need a whole bunch of cotton wool around them anyway, let’s not pack it on.
So it was a beautiful day. And I’m hoping that we related to mom sufficiently so that she can also make room for herself to have a different response to her child so that so that he doesn’t get pushed back by her. And this wouldn’t be her fault, this would just be a default that she has, because she’s been parenting, this this kid a certain way for so long, because he’s been a certain type of kid.
But now that we’ve moved them out. So when we when we change children in this way, we need to understand the risks that come with a change, and that the risks are part of the change, not a reason to stop the change. And not necessarily as a result of the change. They are part of the whole process. Because I hope that tomorrow he runs and plays with that much joy again. And perhaps he misses the tree next time because he’s learned to look up.
And with that comes a learning of awareness that he hasn’t been showing before, where he’s relying on other people to keep him safe. And he’s really ready to keep himself safe. And he can do that through these life experiences with us, helping him to move through this and not to be shut down and move back from it to what a wonderful experience we had today.
And I hope that this makes sense.
