Risk-free Childhood
OK I give up. It’s officially impossible to be a parent in this country.
First we discover that British children are the most unhappy in the world.
And then we are told that our teenagers are going off the rails because they didn’t have enough space and freedom to learn from their own mistakes when they were small.
Basically we have spent a generation designing out all the risks, fears and dangers from childhood. Roads are safer and accidents in the home and play parks are way down.
But now the experts are telling us that this is the reason bored teenagers are finding new ways to put danger back in. More and more young people are choosing risky behaviours with guns, knives, drugs, extreme sports and unsafe sexual behaviour.
I suppose it makes a kind of evolutionary sense. There can be no survival of the fittest if we are all wrapped in cotton wool.
It’s not just our children who live risk-free. Even adult explorers remain tied to the proverbial apron strings, knowing they are only a satellite phone call away from civilisation.
We all live in a security bubble: made safe by the sat nav, tom tom, no-getting-lost, no-broken-bones, safety surface, seatbelt, security camera, safety helmet, wet wipe, sanitized, security industry.
It’s no coincidence that in today’s over-cosseted world, The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden’s has been topping the children’s best-seller lists.
All children need a certain amount of controlled danger to thrive. When we were children we were careful never to let our parents know what we got up to all day. On the surface I was a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth convent schoolgirl, in straw hat and white gloves.
But secretly I got into all sorts of scrapes in search of adventure.
One winter in the early 70s my best friend Valerie and I discovered our own private (and highly illegal) playground right in the middle to Torquay, where I grew up in Devon.
One Sunday morning (my parents thought I was at church) we climbed over iron railings and sneaked up the fire escape on to the roof of a disused Edwardian theatre on the seafront.
Up on the roof we discovered a way to lever out a small window panel, and climbed through on to a ledge high above the main staircase (carefully replacing the window behind us).
From then on we spent hours most Sundays exploring every inch of the dusty, scary old theatre, with its backstage ‘lovey’ messages scrawled on the walls by the stars of yesteryear (Arthur Askey was one I recognized), signed photos and newspaper clippings all pasted up in the wings.
The adventures stopped abruptly one morning as we inched back out across the flat-roof on our bellies and looked up to see a crowd of people watching and pointing at us from the bedrooms of a hotel on the cliff opposite. We stood up and ran for it, convinced the police were on their way to arrest us for breaking and entering.
When I was even younger my eldest brother and I once climbed up scaffolding and over a wall into the enclosed grounds at the back of a historical monument on the seafront.
It was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. Once more, it was only when we heard voices shouting pointing from the windows that we ran for it.
Those kind of growing up experiences, on a par with scrumping for apples, or stealing daffodils from the park for Mother’s Day, are what play experts now say our own children need to do more of if they are to grow into well-rounded adults.