Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #50 Risks and Rolling Down Hills

Transcript

#50 Risks and Rolling Down Hills · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: This is the Happy Family's podcast with doctor Justin Coulson,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: where Luke and Susie and this is the podcast for
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: the time, poor parent who just wons answers now.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: And sus when it comes to the memories that you
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: have as Amma or Dad. One of my favorite home
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  Speaker 2: videos of any that we've ever had is one where
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: I was at the park with Tyson. He was probably
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: about four at the time, and I had the camera
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  Speaker 2: on him up the top of a hill and he
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: came running down as fast as he could. The next
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  Speaker 2: thing I know, the camera goes flying because he's hit
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  Speaker 2: me in the biggest rugby tackle ever and together we've
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: both gone rolling down the rest of the hill and
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: it was just laughter and it was just it was
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  Speaker 2: the best little moment ever. But sus in today's modern world,
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  Speaker 2: the big hit and the rolling down the hill apparently
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: is not allowed anymore.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Sus Well, it all depends on where you are. Doctor
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Justin Coulson from Happy Families dot Com, that are you.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I'm a little bit devastated because it was you who
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: raised the flag and said, Susie, there are places where
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  Speaker 1: you're not allowed to roll down ell anymore. And this
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  Speaker 1: horrifies me.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: So. A little while ago, there was this article in
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: the paper in the Adelaide Advertiser. The Mount Lofty Botanic
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  Speaker 3: Gardens in the Adelaide Hills, or you know, the beautiful
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  Speaker 3: city of Adelaide, has erected signs that request that people
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: not roll down the hill, that parents restrain their children
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: from rolling down the hill because well, somebody might get hurt.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Does you specifically say restrain your children? Because that means
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I can still roll down there unless my parents are there.
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: Your kids are not allowed to roll down the hill,
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: but you are, Yeah, that's right, unless accompanied by an adult.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: No, they were. They're pretty serious about it. We do
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: not want The article basically said that the sign basically
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: said we're banning children from rolling down the hills here
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: at our botanic gardens. It's the fun police, really, isn't it.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: And the reason for it is the sign says for
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: your safety and that of others, please do not engage
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: in sliding or rolling downhill.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I'm going to assume I'll give them the benefit of
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the doubt and assume that there was an incident that
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: we're not aware of.
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  Speaker 3: The article talked about how somebody was rolling down a
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: hill and they took out somebody's legs and that person
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: broke a bone as a result.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, all right, so there was an incident that
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: led them to this. Is this in their mind they're
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: protecting the public.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know there's a car accident every day.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: People still drive cars.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, so there can be some nitpicking on this. Kids,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, kids run into poles all the day, and
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: yet we continue having poles around the school.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Children have broken arms that way, Adults on their phone
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: walking down the footpath running the poles every day.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: Monkey bars. My daughter fell off some monkey bars and
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: broke her arm. We didn't go and sue the people
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: that had the monkey bars, for goodness sake. She's a kid.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: She was singing on the monkey bars. She broke her arm.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: That life, Life happens.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: So this is the interesting thing, is what we understand
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: is most of us think this is the litigious society
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: over the top. Like something happens, you worry about the
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: insurance costs and whether someone's going to sue you, because
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: that's the world we live in. So therefore you ban
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: everything that could lead to that. And we know that
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: that feels ridiculous to us. But at the same point,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: it is the society that we're in. But what do
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: we lose if we start to get so scared of
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: doing what was normal fun because of the risk that
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: possibly something might happen where someone might suit.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Helen Keller said, life is a daring adventure or is nothing. Yeah,
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: I think we lose adventure. I think we lose thrill.
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  Speaker 3: We lose the opportunity to be curious and to explore.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health had
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: a research article published not too long ago, and it
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: says that children need risky play, which includes things like
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: climbing or jumping from great heights or a quick tangent.
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  Speaker 3: Before I tell you what the research found, my kids love.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: You know, when you're walking along a footpath and there
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: the wall beside the path, the kids can walk. My
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: kids love doing that, and every now and again my
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: wife Kylie will say, I want them to get down.
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  Speaker 3: That's not safe, it's risky. And dads are always almost
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: always the ones that say, doubt, be fire, let them play.
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  Speaker 3: I just look at my kids now, say look, you
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  Speaker 3: can go up there, but if you fall and break
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  Speaker 3: both your legs, don't come running to me. But you know,
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  Speaker 3: we're talking about things like unsupervised play where a child
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: might actually take a wrong turn and get lost or
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: be out of sight of parents for more than two
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: or three minutes at a time. Do you remember we
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: all seem to survive not being able to be texted
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: by our parents every fifteen minutes. So where are you
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: being able to ride a bike fast down a hill? Yes,
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  Speaker 3: sometimes we skin knees and even lose teeth. Sometimes it
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: can even be worse than that. But what the research
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  Speaker 3: has found in this particular journal was that when we're
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: doing all this stuff, playing with knives or playing near
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  Speaker 3: a waterfall or the top of a cliff, you know,
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: and who hasn't gone for a bushwalk to the top
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  Speaker 3: of a hill and seeing how close to the edge
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  Speaker 3: that they can get when they're a kid, And also
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: sort of did.
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  Speaker 1: You just stay playing with knives?
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah? And hammers and nails?
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, back to the waterfall, Back to the waterfall.
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: This conversation is very uncomfortable. Who hasn't run with sisson?
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  Speaker 3: The research has found that when kids are allowed to
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  Speaker 3: do these kinds of things, and these were the kinds
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  Speaker 3: of things that were on the list, Okay, I'm not
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: making this up and just being intentionally provocative. What they
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: found was that children who do these things number one,
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: and I think this is helpful. I laugh every time
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: I think about this one. They increase their reaction time
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  Speaker 3: in detecting risk.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yes, that's good, but yeah, that.
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  Speaker 3: Is actually important. I mean it sounds really funny. Oh great,
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: my child, But that means that they're going to recognize
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: what's risky because they've had some experience with risks.
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  Speaker 2: Because you don't understand the potential consequences until you've seen
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: a few of the consequences, so you've experienced the pain.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: It's like the touching of the hot plate scenario that
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: we use as an example. Once they touch it once,
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  Speaker 2: like now, you don't want them to leave their hand
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: on there, But once they learned that that's hot, they're
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: less likely to go near it again.
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  Speaker 3: And that's kind of what the researchers have identified. Usually,
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  Speaker 3: the children don't have to hurt themselves to work out
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  Speaker 3: what's going to hurt them and what's not. By the way, secondly,
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  Speaker 3: they found that the kids who are allowed to take
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: risks usually have high levels of self esteem, which I
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: thought is really interesting. If we keep them withholding opportunities
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: for risk from our children, they don't grow in self esteem. Now,
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  Speaker 3: let's extend this into growing boys in particular. We've removed
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: all of the rights of passages that boys' rights of
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: passage that boys used to go through to become men,
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  Speaker 3: and we're dealing with dramatic problems in terms of self
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  Speaker 3: esteem and identity for our young men. Our young men
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  Speaker 3: aren't being allowed to take the kinds of risks that
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  Speaker 3: they once took. And I'm getting a bit nostalgic and
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: romanticized about the good old days. But listen to the
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: third critical thing that happens when we remove risk from
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: the environment for our children. The researchers found that they're
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: less likely to take risks related to sex and drugs
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: as adolescents if they're allowed to take risks in other
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: parts of their lives, like riding their bikes downhill, playing
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: with knives, playing near the top of mountains, near cliff edges,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: and that kind of thing. It seems like giving our
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: children the opportunities to experience risk actually makes them more
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: wise about risk.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Wow, and you think about it, it makes complete logical sense,
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  Speaker 2: Like to me that that would follow on when you
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: say it, it's not something unnecessarily new, but I go.
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  Speaker 4: Obviously that makes sense to me.
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  Speaker 2: But when you've got a child teuing on the edge
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  Speaker 2: of a cliff, the potential consequences of them getting it
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: slightly wrong are huge. Where do you know what's a
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: risk worth letting them take versus one which is just
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  Speaker 2: too full on?
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  Speaker 3: You know, if we're really worried about our children being endangered,
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: we should never put them in a car again, because
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: the most likely place for a child to die is
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: in the car in a car crash. In terms of
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: working out the balance, I don't think that there's an
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: easy balance, except that we want to get our children
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  Speaker 3: outside and exploring and playing, and when they're going to
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  Speaker 3: do something that's a little bit dangerous, we should just
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: pause and say, I think they'll be okay, and if
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  Speaker 3: they're not on nearby so that I can help, And
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  Speaker 3: if I'm not nearby, they've got a phone, or their
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  Speaker 3: friends's got a phone, or there'll be somebody nearby. We
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  Speaker 3: just have to trust that they're going to be all right.
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  Speaker 3: Recently we had an overseas holiday and it was such
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: a treat and my wife and I had our eldest
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: daughter with us, sixteen years old at the time. She's
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: about to turn eighteen. So it was a little while ago,
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  Speaker 3: and we were riding in the rocky mountains. We hide
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  Speaker 3: some mountain bikes and we were on this mountain bike
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  Speaker 3: track and I thought I was going to die. Now
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  Speaker 3: I'm an experienced cyclist. I love to ride my bike,
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  Speaker 3: and I thought I was going to die. This track
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  Speaker 3: was so scary and it was on the edge of
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  Speaker 3: a cliff, and my poor wife Kylie was riding right
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  Speaker 3: behind me, and she was really, really nervous, but our
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: sixteen year old was having the time of her life.
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  Speaker 3: She just thought this was amazing. She loved it. She
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: thought it was great. She didn't think that it was
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  Speaker 3: risky at all until we got to the bottom and
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  Speaker 3: she's like, there was a couple of really close ones there.
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  Speaker 3: Did you see how far down that was? And well,
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  Speaker 3: like ah, and she's like, that was so awesome.
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  Speaker 2: It's funny because because justin you don't strike me as
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  Speaker 2: the reckless, adrenaline junkie stereotypical Ossie mail.
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  Speaker 4: That was like, yeah, let's take some.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Huge risks, but you're talking so positively about almost some
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: of the same attributes that we might put onto that
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  Speaker 2: kind of ossy day, Like it's.
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  Speaker 4: A significant thing.
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  Speaker 2: You talked about the rights of passage, This allowing a
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: boy to be physically expressing themselves in the world. Is
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: that what you're really talking about, like that physical nature
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: versus girls.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: Well, I suppose so, But again we need to treat
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: them that it's still not okay to hurt people. Boys
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: can be boys, but they've still got to be respectful
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: and going through rites of passage doesn't mean being disrespectful.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: That means learning what it is to be a man. Look,
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: all of this comes back to rolling down hills, right,
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Is it okay to roll down hills? You could ask
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: the same question, is it okay to walk the kids
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: to school? I don't have any Aussie data on this,
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: although I'm pretty certain that it has been collected, but
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: I couldn't locate it in time for our interview. But
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: I found an English study that showed that eighty six
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: percent of kids between the age of seven to eleven.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Eighty six percent of kids used to go to school
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: without an adult in the nineteen seventies today twenty five percent.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: That's true. That's huge. There's a study that I found
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: in Canada, eighty one percent of parents, eighty one percent
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: of parents percentage of parents with kids between ten and twelve,
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: are worried about stranger danger. You know, the odds of
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: your child being abducted one in fourteen million. And yet
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: we've got this overblown sense of my children going to
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: be okay. They're going to be okay. They can roll
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: down hills, they can ride bikes, they can go out
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: with their friends and not come home until whatever time
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: you decide is curfew plus thirty minutes or an hour,
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: and they will usually be okay. I know that sometimes
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: they're not, but the times when they're not are so
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: infinitesimally small. Obviously, I can say that because nothing awfuls
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: happened to one of my kids. Yeah, and I'm sensitive
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: to sometimes things that are bad do happen. But I
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: still believe that we are way too overprotective. Let them
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: roll down the hill for crying out, Lad, You've got
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: me all.
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: I've seemed up too well.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Two things that I do want to go in a
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: slightly offshoot from this. First of all, I like to
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: say I think Susie as a mum has grown in
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: this area so incredibly well, like at the start of
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: us having kids, you were so protective and so female
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: with boys. And I say that none of that not derogatory,
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: but it's not less risk taking, the research, the research.
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: But just the.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Other day I discovered that it was it was mum
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: that put our six year old up on the roof
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: of the house to get the balls down. It's the time, yeah,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: And I went, oh, my goodness, Like that just showed
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: incredible growth, because there's no way that five years ago
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: if I would have thought that you would ever be
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: the one, you know, the first one to put our
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: kids up on the roof. So I just think it's
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: wonderful that you're you're, you know, stretching yourself in this
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: area because I know instinctively it wasn't you know where
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: you were naturally at. Here's the thing though, justin because
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: I'm naturally the risk taker in life, but I'm also
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: the one that has been naturally more free to let
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: our kids explore and potentially get hurt. I've always feared, though,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: what if I'm the one who put them up on
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: the roof and they fall down and break their leg?
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: How would Susie be with me? If I'm the one
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: who took the risk as the parent and it turned
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: out bad.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: I don't know why you're asking me should soon, But.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, because it's not about us relationships generally that
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: there is. Is there a risk from mom and dad
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: or the two carers that one who allows the risk
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: to happen. It puts a friction in the relationship because
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: something did.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: Go Sometimes that tension will exist, and other times they'll
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: look one another and say, you know, this could have
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: happened to anyone, And it just depends on the people
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: in the relationship. I have a wonderful friend who his son,
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: sixteen or seventeen years old, ran and dived into the ocean,
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: didn't realize that there was a sandbar. He's a paraplegic. Now,
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: you know, we don't have to be putting our kids
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: in risky situations for awful things to happen. You can
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: step off a gutter and break your ankle. Life does
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: this stuff to all of us in different ways. And
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: because I mean, life is so fragile and things can
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: happen in such remarkably bizarre ways. And then you know,
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: you hear about a child who falls from a third
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: story window, and survives, or you hear these stories that
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: just nothing short of miraculous, and you think, how does
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: this work? I just think maybe I'm wrong, and I'm
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: willing to accept that I could be wrong. But we've
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: got to let our kids take risks. How else will
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: they ever learn. It's kind of like the parent who says,
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: I want my child to be to be responsible. I'm
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: not going to let them have any responsibility until they
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: can prove that they can be responsible. Yeah, well no,
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: You've got to give them responsibility so that they can
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: prove that they're responsible. And when they get it wrong,
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: you say that was not responsible. Try again. I'm going
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: to give you the responsibility again. Try again. And it's
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: the same with risk. You did something, you got hurt.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: What can you learn from it? How can we make
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: this work better. There's a place in Norway or Finland.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: It's called Pulpit Rock. It's about a thousand vertical meters
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: above the lake and there's this rock there and the
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: authorities have rammed this iron I guess bar into the
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: rock and you can see photos when you google the
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: images of it, you can see photos of pe people
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: who are literally hanging one thousand meters above the water,
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: off the edge of this rock. There's nothing under them,
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: there's no trick photography here and they're just hanging onto
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: this rock. And I thought to myself, Australian authorities wouldn't
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: do that. Yeah. True, we would have fences and we
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: would have signs and warnings and all sorts of things
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: to keep people as far away from the edge as
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: we can. Now, there is value in staying away from
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: the edge. Some risks are not worth taking, but we
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: know from research that our kids do better when they're
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: allowed to take appropriate, age appropriate, developmentally appropriate risks and
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: explore the world as a result.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, beautiful, doctor Justin calls them from happy families dot
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: com dot au. Shall we go roll down hill?
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: Yes, let's all do it.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: And when you finished rolling down that hill, you can
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: jump online to happy families dot com dot au where
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: you'll find more resources on how to improve parenting or
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: just find some answers to some questions you might have
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: about parenting. That's happy families dot com dot au. Or
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: if you're interested in having doctor Justin calls and speak
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: at your school, church or community group, you can find
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: out more at Justinculson dot com.