Parents of the millennials think they are helping their children by keeping them safe. However, overprotective parenting is being linked to a lack of child development relating to independence. Children need to be able to figure out their own paths and to explore their surroundings, which are constantly being monitored and hindered upon by adults. When children do get access to unsupervised play however, they expand on their knowledge of their surroundings and figure out what to do themselves, without help from adults. Risky play is the act of doing dangerous play to help children grow. Children should be allowed to have some risky play to grow as a human and to learn how to handle experiences on their own.
Risky play will always be a necessity of life, whether adults or other authority figures will try to stop is irrelevant, it will happen. Kids need to be able to experience some things on their own to learn how to deal with adult situations better. If they are confined to their own household and the protections of their parents they will be safe, but they will never learn about what is in the world outside of the house, what some of the other kids are doing, which their parents probably wouldn't approve of without their supervision. Growing up, I definitely stayed inside the house a lot, or in my backyard where my parents could see me. However, every once in a while I would take my bike and ride it around the block on the sidewalk, to where my parents couldn't see me and I felt free. I was by myself, and I was a 11 year old paranoid kid, so I wasn't worried about where my parents were, I was more worried about the people walking along the sidewalks or scary cars driving by. Over time, I became more comfortable with doing activities without adult supervision, like walking home from school and staying home by myself, and I continued to grow as a person thanks to that.
Mary E. Stapleton School was right down the street, exactly one mile away from my house. Cameron Middle school was exactly in between my house and Stapleton, exactly one mile away. When I was in middle school, I did not like being home alone, so I would always walk over to my mom’s work, Stapleton, where she is a kindergarten teacher. My brother is two years older, and would walk with me there, with his friends and my friends tagging along too. For whatever reason, I wanted to get back to Stapleton fast, so I had my brother’s friend ride my over, with me standing on his bicycle pegs. Everything was fine as we we’re going there, but as we were getting close I thought it would be a great idea to jump off the pegs, instead of waiting for him to stop. I did, ended up doing a flip, and I landed on my back. I ended up being fine, and I did not realize how scary it was until after the fact. There were not adults involved, and I walked away with just a couple of scrapes. I did not tell anyone because no adults were there for it and I was not too badly hurt, so I did not see the problem with it. This radically different than the normal me, who would have sat there and cried. This is connected to Gray’s article, which included a part about how children need to keep their emotions in check. This type of speedy, unsupervised play could have gotten me seriously injured, but it did not.
Adults have begun to move away from risky play because they don’t want to be seen as a bad parent. During her Atlantic article, “The Overprotected Kid,” Rosin stated “As the Tribune reader had intuited, the cultural understanding of acceptable risk began to shift, such that any known risk became nearly synonymous with hazard”. This quote brings out a lot of meaning, and an almost chicken and the egg situation. Did the overprotected kid come first, and harsher regulation due to parent’s needs, or did the parents hear about accidents, push for higher regulations, and then just snowball from there? If my parents were there when I jumped off the pegs, I couldn’t even fathom what would have happened. I did something dangerous, however I took responsibility for myself and I ended up okay. The types of overprotected parents talked about in the article probably would have quarantined the whole block and called in every agency imaginable to get something done about, while simultaneously lobbying in the state congress to get a ban on bicycle pegs.
Rosin had been writing the article about this type of parenting where kids do their own activities away from their parents and then she finally sees her kid do it. When she watches her son go to roll down the hill and get muddy and wet, she thinks he is going to cry, but instead he stands up and shakes it off. I believe in this moment she realizes that it can be a good thing for kids to learn by themselves without being sheltered. During the article, she was writing it like a stranger looking in, comparing her experience to the modern child’s experience, and even she had forgotten what she had done as a child for she was not prepared to let her kid go free, yet he thrived when he got to the playground. I think the generations are polarizing, one generation gives too little freedom, so the next gives too much. There needs to be a balance in order to have a healthy lifestyle, because being too cooped up can be bad for someone, but being always free can be just as bad. Once a balance is found, parents can be better parents. Both Rosin’s kid and I chose not to cry when we faced danger while playing unsupervised. Instead, we learned that we had to be able to deal with problems ourselves and adapt to situations. The parallel between myself and Rosin’s child is a great bridge to show that this is something kids will naturally learn to do, and should be given the option to learn, because everyone should be able to have unsupervised play sometimes.
Risky play is necessary for the development of children, and while it is not okay all the time, it should be permitted to help foster our children’s learning. Parents, at the heart of things, are only looking out for what is best for their children because they truly care about them and want them to succeed. However, these parents are shielding their children from the world. By letting children have the essence of freedom, they will become more comfortable with their surroundings. Children need to grow on their own, and if adults are putting a stop to that, it threatens the child’s development, which is ironic because the adults think they are helping the child grow up normally.
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