... about taking risks

This is an interesting thing I learned. 

A parent wants to protect their children. It is commonly a parent's strongest instinct: to protect their children from all risks; all danger; all mistakes; all failures. 

As if. 

Certainly children should and must be protected, but they must also learn to make decisions and, yes, learn to take risks. Because they will have to make decisions and make choices in their lives. 

If a person has not had experience in thinking for themselves while growing up, they will be ill equipped for making any decisions when the big choices in life appear. 

Parents who carefully make all the choices for their kids, and "protect" them from all risks, are doing a disservice to their children. Children must learn to make decisions. Children must learn the consequences of decisions -- both success and failure. Children must learn how to cope with mistakes. 

Too often parents will protect their children from the consequences of the child's mistakes. No, I'm not talking about punishment; punishment is not particularly useful as a learning tool. It is about how to handle mistakes; you handle mistakes by:

• Owning up to it. Admit what you did.
• Find out what happened, what was the damage, if any.
• Correct what you can; replace what you can; make it up to anyone injured.
• In other words, children must learn how to take responsibility.

A simple example: Through some action, a child breaks a window. The consequences of playing baseball in the house, perhaps.

The wrong thing to happen is punishment and a call the glazier.

The right thing to happen is that the child pays for the glass and helps install the new pane. In this way the child has made up the damage and has learned a new skill. 

I remember being punished as a child, but I cannot, for the life of me, remember what I was being punished for. Not a very efficient lesson if I can't remember what I did wrong. 

But, when I broke a chair, and was involved in making it whole again, I remember it clearly; both what happened and what I did to make it good. That's a good lesson. 

If a child can learn how to cope with mistakes and failures, that child can grow up to be an outstanding adult, because such people seem to be rare. A child who learns about accepting mistakes, taking responsibility and learning from mistakes -- and making things right and moving on, will be a person who becomes able to take the reasonable risks that can make life rewarding. 

A life lived in fear, such as the fear of making a mistake, is not a life worth living.

If a child learns how to handle the consequences from mistakes, the child can become free of that fear. 

Children will take risks; children will make decisions, and children will make mistakes. It's part of growing up and learning. Parents cannot stop it. 

All a parent can, and should, do is help their child learn how to handle these things when they do happen.