I recently wrote about how skateboarding taught me a measure of resilience that I don’t necessarily see in my kids. They simply have a different relationship to risky activities. As I hinted at in the post, there are upsides to this from a parental concern perspective. It’s just hard to know where that line between risk and benefit should be drawn.
I used boogie boarding as an example in the post. When I brought up my thoughts with a friend, he relayed an anecdote in which a colleague was thrown by a wave while boogie boarding, hit his head, and subsequently died. Given his personal experience, he wasn’t too bullish on ocean sports. I told him that my sons were not really into them because of their overall risk aversion. They never even learned to ride bikes because they were so concerned about injury. My friend thought that was taking it a bit too far and that kids should embrace the bicycle.
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