Chris Myers Asch just moved from D.C. to small-town Maine with his rabbi-wife, three kids under six, and a cat. He writes and teaches history, he plays baseball and does martial arts, but mostly he's a stay-at-home dad who's fascinated by how kids grow into full-fledged people.
He blogs at Let Her Eat Dirt-A Dad's take on raising tough, adventurous girls
The other day I was biking around town and came across a Little League baseball field, a classic diamond carved out of the woods, the kind that triggers all sorts of wonderful nostalgia: dirt infield, chain-link fence dugouts, local ads plastered along the outfield wall. A giant banner hung across one dugout proclaiming the four values that the league holds dear: “Sportsmanship, skills, safety, fun.
It seemed innocuous enough at first, but then I thought about it. Sportsmanship, skills, fun — that’s all good. But safety? Really? Is that what baseball (or any other sport or kids’ activity) should be about?
As a dad of three kids under age six, I have imbibed my share of the Safety Kool-Aid. My kids wear bike helmets and seatbelts, they look both ways when crossing the street, they don’t put metal forks in electrical outlets (at least now while Daddy’s in the room). But I don’t consider safety to be my primary job as a father. I’m less concerned about protecting my kids from the big, bad world than in preparing them to live in that world on their own.
To do that, I often indulge in what I call “purposeful peril.” What I mean by that is that I deliberately let my kids encounter perilous situations when those experiences serve a larger purpose of building character. I’m not stupid about it – I’m not going to have my kids race across four lanes of traffic because the risk is too high and the reward minimal. But I will encourage three-year-old Robin to leap off an eight-foot play structure onto the ground; if she lands poorly, she may twist her ankle or face-plant, but she won’t die. I will push five-year-old Miriam to go off-road on her bike, even though she’s scared; at the worst, she may hit a tree root and go flying over her handlebars, but she’ll be fine. I will challenge them to shimmy up the outside of the covered slide, or to climb as high as they can on an old tree, or to explore a dark cave.
Encouraging risky behavior may get me nasty looks from the safety police, but it helps my kids learn how to take smart risks, how to be adventurous, how to enjoy uncertainty, how to manage fear. They can’t do that if they are always “safe” or if Daddy intervenes at the slightest sign of danger. I want to let them make mistakes, flail around a bit, even hurt themselves – so that they will learn, over time, how to handle failure, how to confront their fears, how to persevere in the face of adversity.
By constantly protecting our kids from perceived dangers, we may be crippling their ability to deal with dangerous situations later on. We won’t be hanging out behind the school when someone offers them pot; we can’t be at the party where some drunken jerk tries to force them into a bedroom; we can’t get behind the wheel when their inebriated friends insist on driving home. Instead, we have to prepare them to make smart decisions on their own. Maybe the best way to be “safe” in the long run is to be a bit dangerous in the short run.
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