Risk Assessment is a Skill That Requires Time to Learn
The longer we parent the more I become aware of the intricate things children learn that could never be measured. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could measure every component of childhood and spend the years ticking off boxes in a quest of doing this parenting thing right? Grade-level phonics decoding skills and fluency of multiplication skills are fairly easy to measure. But there are so many mysterious things parts of the whole child make up that we could never calculate or even know. The depth of child development is humbling and if we are on a mission to give it our all we must honor the pieces that we cannot grasp.
Risk assessment is one of those skills that cannot be graded and yet it is significantly important. We calculate risk in infinitesimally small moments as we swiftly determine the severity of outcome as well as the probability that outcome might occur. The equation for calculating risk is rather simple. It looks like this: Risk = Consequence x Likelihood.
In other words, to be able to assess risk you have to be able to accurately two separate things. First, you must be able to determine the worst possible outcome. Secondly, you need to have an idea of how likely that particular outcome is.
For instance, taking a young child to play near a body of water and providing no training, no supervision, and no floatation device is a situation that involves severe consequences with a high likelihood. The risk level for making that choice is extremely high. In contrast, taking a young child on a short hike and allowing that child to balance on a few fallen logs would be a low risk decision because the worst that could happen would probably be a twisted ankle or a broken bone but the likelihood of either of those is fairly small.
Childhood is the time to build this risk assessment skill set. Kids need ample time to explore and adequately learn both components of risk.
Through environmental exploration children gradually move through increasingly complex movements, experiencing many types of outcomes along the way. The occasional bump, bruise or scrape becomes the teacher and when ample time is supplied kids learn what happens when they fall, for instance. Through one small experience after another kids gradually learn the differences between falling on grass, falling on cement and falling in the water. A childhood filled with movement leaves kids with the knowledge that a spill off a higher surface will usually be more painful than a spill off something that is closer to the ground.
Amazingly, children are perfectly made for this type of experiential learning. Kids are born with more bones than adults. Newborns begin life with just over 300 bones whereas adults only have 206 bones. This is because of cartilage, connective tissue that is tough but also flexible. Eventually the cartilage will harden and turn into bone but until that happens kids are more malleable than adults.
Additionally, the bones of a child have a different chemical composition than the bones of an adult. An adult’s bones are more likely to break than bend because they are harder and more brittle. When you take into account that as a general rule children heal more quickly than adults, you can begin to see why childhood is the right time for kids to begin to get a good grasp on risk assessment.
Kids are closer to the ground. They weigh less. Their bone structure is more easily able to withstand the twists and turns and tumbles of childhood. And with each misstep kids are learning that first part of risk assessment, the level of consequence that occurs in a blunder and the level of severity that a slip-up may cause.
The second part of risk assessment deals with the likelihood of outcome. How likely is it you might slip on a wet rock? Or fall off a rotten log? What are the chances you will fall off your skateboard on a downhill incline? What are the odds of tripping as you run down a steep hill? How can kids possibly know the answers to these questions unless they are given the freedom to use their bodies in gradually more complex ways?
Risk assessment cannot be taught at a desk while looking at a chalkboard. The essential components to learning this invaluable skill are time and space, two things that kids these days are often lacking. There is an innate drive in children to experiment with increasingly complex movements and in doing so they learn what their bodies can and cannot do. They learn about severity and probability of consequences. They learn the amazing, lifelong skill of risk assessment.
