Blog
Are we worrying about the wrong things?
Are we too overprotective, or too irresponsible?
How do we measure risk?
These are questions that haunt parents, especially when something goes wrong with one of their kids. Case in point: last week, trying not to be overprotective, I let my toddler climb on a kitchen stool (nurturing his newfound love of adventurous climbing). We ended up in urgent care. We have gates on our stairs to keep that same toddler from crashing down them, but our family lives and plays in an urban neighborhood with a moderate level of crime. It’s all measured risk. But the measuring can be flat-out unnerving.
Last Friday Time ran a feature called The Growing Backlash Against Over-Parenting, pitting “helicopter” or “stealth bomber” parents against the emerging consortium of “slow-parenting” gurus. As Free-Range Kids mom Lenore Skenazy argues, “We’re infantilizing our kids into incompetence.”
The article is definitely slanted in critique of the hovering phenomenon that has led parenting trends of the past decade or more. Wherever you stand on that, what’s certainly worth evaluating is how much our parenting is driven by fear. At one point author Nancy Gibbs notes, “Fear is a kind of parenting fungus: invisible, insidious, perfectly designed to decompose your peace of mind.”
All parenting requires measured risk. But I sure don’t want to be eaten alive by fear about my kids while I’m measuring. How do you see parents of kids in your ministry working through these dynamics, and how much does fear drive the process? What have you learned from parents who operate out of a different mindset?
Trackback URL: http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/2009/11/measured-risk-parenting/trackback/
Leave a Reply