My wife and I are extremely lucky to have a beautiful cottage about 45 minutes outside the city. It’s remote enough to give us a break while close enough to mean a relatively painless and scream free commute back home. On our property, we have one of the most unique trees you will ever see. The previous owner was a fisherman and had a large CB tower in the backyard. His wife planted a wisteria at the base of the CB tower and the plant did something very interesting; it basically melded to the tower.
There are sharp, 90-degree angles where the tree has perfectly surrounded square bars of steel and we’re left with this truly incredible sight. During a hurricane a few years back, the top half of the tower bent and fell and now forms a small structure, complete with a slide and swing. And the other day, our five-year-old climbed the tree.
I thought I’d be a laid-back dad. I really did. I’m a pretty laid-back guy in general (or at least I was) with a pretty laissez faire attitude about life. I’ve always thought that when I had kids, I’d just let them roam free and everything would work out fine. And then I had kids and I put them in a bubble and I rarely let them out of that bubble because what if they get hurt?
So, letting my son climb this tree was very difficult for me. It was sort of my wife’s idea and the interesting thing about my wife is that we always thought SHE would be super strict with the kids and be a little more overbearing than me, just based on our personalities. And then we had kids and she shrugged and said, “they’ll be fine.” So as my son climbed higher and higher, my blood pressure rose higher and higher while my wife sipped a latte and filmed the whole debacle.
Here’s my question. And I’ve Googled it and I haven’t found a clear answer. “From what height could I catch a toddler without hurting them or me?” If the correct answer is over about 12 feet, I’m screwed, because that’s how high he was. And there I was, holding my arms out like I was going to catch my son as he plummeted from the wisteria tree, all the while realizing how ridiculous I was being.
Kids…climb…trees. Or at least they SHOULD climb trees. When I was a kid I climbed trees. When I was my son’s age I was climbing trees, driving ride on mowers, whittling wood and doing all sorts of things that would give me a massive coronary if I saw my son THINKING about doing any of them. So, I’m trying my best to work off a terrifying premise when it comes to dealing with the physical activities of the kids: “what are the chances this could kill them?”
There’s a great program in California called the Tinker School where Grade 2 kids are exposed to a wide variety of opportunities that most parents today would report to authorities if we saw a parent letting their child do them. They play with power tools, they use pocket knives, they take apart appliances and they explore fire. Sounds terrifying. But the idea is that it teaches kids to take personal responsibility on a small scale. A five-year-old kid that falls out of a tree at 12 feet and breaks their arm is going to be very careful when they’re scaling rock walls at age 16. A kid who burns their hand on a toaster oven at age three, like I did, is going to have a good relationship with heat as they get older.
So next week I’m taking my son indoor rock climbing and/or bouldering because he loves to climb and I want him to be good at it. If he breaks his arm, he breaks his arm. Kids love casts. I’m not suggesting that we be negligent or that we ignore our parental responsibilities to keep our children safe. Quite the opposite. I believe that part of our responsibility as a parent lies in raising strong, independent children. Most animals don’t coddle and it works out ok. You never hear about a bear living in his mom’s basement until he gets married. You never see a shark piggybacking a BARELY smaller shark while they’re hunting.
It’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be. Good luck.
Break a leg.
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