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Cotton wool chokes...
Tuesday 10 August 2010
Categories: Growing up, Letting go, Media Influence, Parenting, Personal Safety
Our children are our most precious possession… and yet, of course, we don’t possess them. We bear them, nurture them, treasure them and continue to worry about them long after they leave our home and make their own. They enchant and frustrate us; delight and terrify us. At every stage of their lives we try to provide for and protect them. So when there is a media story about a dreadful fate befalling a child our deepest fears are aroused.
The urge to defend and protect our young is a biological one which we share with most of the animal kingdom. A parent’s job is to keep their children safe… and yet, of course, it is not always possible to do that. Appalling, unpreventable accidents happen to even the best cared for child – the random car crash, the falling tree, the hidden fatal illness.
We can and must try to shelter them from harm, if only we knew where that harm lies. The easy ones – crossing the road safely, staying away from sources of electricity and deep water – all these we can do. And then there are the dangers that the media features – abductors, abusers, paedophiles and murderous strangers. Yet these are so rare as to be exceptional and, indeed, have always been with us. Read Dickens if you’ve forgotten. Statistically your child is a thousand times more likely to die in a road accident than to be abducted, raped or murdered.
We must face the fact that we cannot protect our children from random acts of perverted and wicked people as Derrick Bird’s murderous rampage clearly shows.
In fact we do more harm than good if we overprotect our young. How can a child deal with potential danger if she is never allowed to take risks? The child who is never taught to swim, shown how to use a sharp knife, helped to climb, to ride a bike will be at real risk.A good parent will teach their child to take risks and to learn from any mistakes. After all how does a baby learn to walk but by tumbling over again and again? Is it possible to learn to ride a bike without falling off many times? Wrapping a child in cotton wool, trying to keep her away from all dangers, puts her at greater risk than enabling her to assess the dangers and take necessary action.
We must be brave, for the sake of our children. We must let them fly the nest once we have taught then all we know. We must let them fail’and pick themselves up and try again.
After all, cotton wool chokes.
I couldn’t agree more, but how can you train your soul to let go? How can one be sure that all the advice given is not ignored or brushed off as oblolete wisdom?