Five dangerous things you should let your kids do

A marshmallow warning! LOL

... is the name of a short video by Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, a camp in California that allows children to get hands-on experience in building things with real power tools. He feels that an unprecedented emphasis on safety is unintentionally robbing kids of some valuable experiences, and that it's normal for children to sometimes get scrapes and bruises while growing up. This was also the premise behind the successful "Dangerous Book for Boys".

It's really six things you should let your kids do (while adults are watching), and here is the list:

1) Play with fire
2) Play with knives
3) Throw a spear (throw things)
4) Deconstruct appliances
5) Break the DMCA (digital millennium copyright act)
6) Drive a car (sitting in lap)

Watch the video, and you will understand. It may seem counter intuitive at first, but think about it - if an adult is watching, what harm is there in allowing a child to experiment with lighting/stirring a camp fire or trying find fuel for a burning barrel? As long as you are nearby to make sure they don't anything catastrophic, like throw gasoline on it, they will be fine, and in fact, they will have more knowledge and experience in handling fires in the future.

Except for #5, I did all these things as a kid, and survived.

To this list, I would add two essential items:

7) Climb trees
8) Learn how to handle animals like snakes

My friends and I used to climb trees all the time when we were kids. We would see how high we could dare get and once (and only once) I fell out of a pine tree when a branch broke. I fell pretty far too; fortunately, several branches broke as I fell through them and they slowed me down. I was winded, but OK. And learned something.

In eighth grade, when our class went on a camping field trip involving plenty of climbing and rappelling, I couldn't believe how many guys my age had never climbed anything. Some of them were literally crying when they got stuck halfway up a small cliffside. Some of them were the school jocks but I couldn't believe they were scared like three year-olds. I get scared of heights like anyone else, but they weren't even very high up. The problem was they just didn't know what to do.

Later, when I had to tackle obstacle courses (now called "confidence courses") in Army basic training and Air Assault school, it was a piece of cake. I literally flew over the things.

I also had every pet under the sun. I learned that kids who were afraid of mice or snakes were kids who had no experience with them at all. When I was 11 I could identify the all the venomous snakes in America (there are really only four kinds, and three of those are very similar).

I weigh these things all the time with my kids, and while I want them to be safe, I don't want children who are afraid of the world outside their air-conditioned walls. Plus, anything that gets them outside and away from the TV is usually pretty good by default...





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