Taking risks is part of the game of life

Henry Northover of Adelaide checks out the dangers of having fun on a swing. Photo/Supplied

What has living in caves got to do with the wonderful "lilo" at Marton's Wellington Rd playground? More than you might think ...

Early humans had to take risks to move away from their nice, warm caves and start building house-like shelters - structures that might fall on them, or catch fire, and which were far less mastodon-proof than even the least modern and desirable caves.

It is fair to say that if we hadn't, as a species, taken a few risks, we would still be living in caves - albeit comfortable and tastefully decorated.

When I was a little boy, I was terrified of the lilo. It was a stout plank, about three or four metres long and two feet wide, hanging about 600 millimetres off the ground.

It was suspended at each end on long steel rods under a high rectangular frame so that it would swing from end to end much like a normal swing, except that there was no seat as such - you had to hang on like grim death.

The best way to use it was to stand on the end and hang onto the suspending rods - if you had to sit on the plank you would be at the mercy of some big kids who were in control of how high and fast the plank would swing and, believe me, there were some who did not have your best interests at heart. You soon learned whether to get off or hang on tight.

Like all of my adventurous play that kept my poor mother's heart firmly in her mouth, the lilo, the trees that I climbed and the roofs that I loved to jump off taught me about risk. How to assess it and how to deal with it.

This world is full of risk, and we will never be rid of it, so we need to know how to deal with it. Assessing and dealing with risk needs to be second nature to us from an early stage.

It is too late, for instance, to start work in the forest, felling trees and learn how to deal with risk "on the job". Training is vital for forestry workers, but you can't learn about risk from a book or from a three-hour lecture, and the same is true for all jobs - from retail to the police.

Obviously, when in the workplace - or at play - it helps to understand what you are dealing with. Danger can appear from any direction, in many forms and in unexpected places so it is important to be able to identify and deal with risk in a natural and confident manner.

The best place to learn about risk is in the playground. At worst kids may suffer bumps and sprains, but they learn to assess risk naturally. How high is the jungle gym? What they will land on if they fall off it? Is it soft or hard? Which manoeuvres are too risky? One hand or two?

I am concerned that we might be raising a frightened and timid generation who deal with risk by trying the impossible but expensive task of eliminating all of it. We may end up with a generation of young people qualified for little else than working as health and safety advisers.

Chris Northover is a former Wanganui lawyer who has worked in the fields of aviation, tourism, health and the environment - as well as designing electric cars and importing photo-voltaic panels.