Power - overcoming adults’ fears

When I started this in 2008 the conversations were very, very different than they are today which gives me so much hope. You know, early on it was like the questions I was getting from families and also organizations and schools, principals, administrators, the questions were more like why is it important to get children outside and what do you do all day and what does that even look like, you know. So it was really kind of basic questions. Now I’m getting so much more buy-in to the concept, but fear. Still lots of fear around injury, liability, fear of risk and still certainly, you know, at times families who, you know what, some people may call helicopter parenting or hyper parenting. Just so much fear that they’re really afraid to let their children have freedom and let them experience kind of the normal ups and downs of everyday life which is a natural instinct. As a parent I know it’s a natural instinct to want to protect your children and to want to keep them safe and to nurture them and to give them the best life possible. So the conversations now are more like we understand that you want to protect your child. Did you know that allowing them to engage in risky play is actually going to give them more opportunities to do so and it’s going to enrich them in a lot of ways?