Parents generally blind to the process

 

Warwick, UK. New research indicates that parents are often totally unaware of just how often their children take risks and just how good they are at managing that risk. The researchers found children indulge in a great deal of thoughtful and considered risk taking that is invisible to adults.

 

On average the researchers found that while children do make misjudgements, they do not, as is sometimes assumed, ‘blindly’ throw themselves into risk-taking behaviours.

 

A study by researchers at the University of Warwick and the Research Unit for General Practice in Copenhagen looked at children aged 10-12 in a Copenhagen suburb. They were observed for 8 months to see how they engaged with risk away from their parents in their everyday life at school, at an after-school centre and in their local community. Their findings appear in Sociology of Health & Illness: A Journal of Medical Sociology.

 

The researchers found many examples of how children actively engage with risk and daily manage situations that involve chance and risk. They actively decided how much risk to expose themselves to, avoided harmful actions, made assessments of their own bodily capacity and gauged risk in accordance with it. They even successfully negotiated levels of risks with other children by setting and amending the rules and physical limits to their games and activities. 

 

One particular example observed as a popular games called ‘Hill’ played almost every break-time. The game took place on an asphalted slope framed by two brick walls in the middle of the playground. Every break time one child would be the ‘catcher’, and would try to catch other children as they ran at high speed across the slope between two safe zones at either end of the slope. This is one typical conversation about the game:

 

The boys, still in the classroom, then enthusiastically discussed how hard and in which ways they were allowed to push each other and at the same time ensuring the pleasure of fun they associated with the game.

 

The researchers’ observations suggest that physical risk was less common among the girls studied but that that girls took more “emotional risks” for instance making the first move to form friendships.

Professor Pia Christensen (University of Warwick) says:

 

“Many parents would be amazed if they realised just how often their children take risks and just how good they are at managing that risk. This risk taking helps them gain a clear understanding of the strengths and limits of their bodies and prepares them for interaction with the real world beyond the often over–protected home.”

 

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Jumping off and being careful: children's strategies of risk management in everyday life. Pia Christensen, Miguel Romero Mikkelsen. Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 30 No. 1 2008 ISSN 0141–9889, pp. 000–000 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01046.x

 

Abstract. This article addresses the complexity of children's risk landscapes through an ethnography of 10- to 12-year-old Danish children. The data revealed how children individually and collectively engaged with risk in their everyday activities. The children assessed risks in relation to their perceptions of their health as strength and control, negotiated the conditions of playing, and attuned their responses to situations of potential social and physical conflict. In the paper this risk engagement is illustrated in a variety of contexts: children's decisions to wear or not to wear a bicycle helmet; playing and games and routine pushing and shoving at school. In looking after themselves, children negotiate rules of participation and they safeguard personal and collective interests. Gender differences in these processes are addressed and discussed. The article argues that risk engagement is an important resource through which children also learn from their own mistakes. This is a necessary learning process when children engage with their personal health and safety. The article critically discusses different sociological frameworks and shows the significance of the study for the growing literature on understanding the meaning of risk in childhood.

 

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