We have to allow our kids to experience risk, says Kerre Woodham.
One of the best parts of every summer is catching up with my brother and his family. We live at opposite ends of the island and we don't see each other as often as we'd like. So Christmas is a great chance to sit around, watch the kids in the pool and talk. He was saying on the family's camping trip up north this year, he'd seen a group of young teens jumping off a cliff into the pool below.
From where he was standing, he could see that while the water was deep enough, there was a dangerous lip at the edge of the pool. One of the kids would only have to miscalculate by a few centimetres and there'd be a certain tragedy. He called out and warned them and he says they looked at him as though he was mad, acknowledged him politely enough - and kept on jumping. He would have done exactly the same thing when he was their age, he said. He'd have been the first off the cliff, goading on any of his mates who didn't have the cojones to make the same leap of faith.
But he's glad he spoke up, especially in light of the death of a teenager at a swimming hole just a few miles further north. With two kids, one a brand new teen, the other a gorgeous young 11-year-old, my brother and his wife have a nervous few years ahead of them.
How do you give kids the confidence and self-assurance they need to make the right decisions when all you want to do is protect them? How can you let them take chances - the same mad, irresponsible chances you did - when you know the awful consequences if things go wrong?
There was an excellent opinion piece in this week's Herald by Michael Duncan, a lecturer in sociology and theology at Carey Baptist College. In it, he said the reason young women drink so heavily these days is not to simply get pissed - but to put themselves in dangerous situations where they don't know what will happen next. Drinking, he wrote, was "a high-wire act, full of exhilarating fear and unanswered questions. What will happen to them? Will they survive the night? Where will they be in the morning and who with?"
Michael Duncan says these young women have been brought up on safety, more so than in previous generations, and are now hungering for risk. He's got it in one. When I left my loving family and my Catholic boarding school to go off to be a journalist, I was like a trouble-seeking missile.
What do you expect when you teach young women to be stroppy, articulate and inquisitive and at the same time, lock them away from the world?
Michael Duncan's right when he says we have to allow our kids to experience risk and adrenaline and fear so they don't go looking for those same experiences in substance abuse or behind the wheel of a car. Sometimes, we have to shut our eyes and mouths, cross our fingers and hope for the best - just as our parents did with us.
- HERALD ON SUNDAY
