Dangerous things

Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School. Someone with such a cool name (and founder of the Tinkering School no less) – sounds like he should be given some award or other! I love his Tedtalk about five (and a half) dangerous things we should allow our children to do.

I’m not advocating driving lessons for our nursery children or building regular fires in the playground, however I’ve muttered about us wrapping up our children in cotton wool before. Trying dangerous things (within boundaries) helps us develop our risk taking and that’s an important thing for us as we progress through life.

I laughed a few times as Gever talked as I remembered some of the dangerous things I loved doing as a girl. And those things were the things that made me feel independent. It was great lighting bonfires  and burning various bits of food on them (most of which we ate anyway), prodding things with a Swiss army knife was also a favourite as was sitting on my uncle’s knee from the age of about three as he drove a tractor and I turned the steering wheel (My Mum would have had a heart attack had she known). My knees sound a bit like Gever’s as they bear the scars of many a fall from a tree or something sharp being knelt on!

In these days of my ban in my nursery on even a home made birthday cake being brought in (my mantra is – it must be shop bought and still in wrapper so we know it is safe to eat – that’s disregarding any chemicals which might be in the shop bought cake…..) so I comply with health and safety regulations, I continue to wonder if its not time we found a few more modern time Baden Powell types like Gever.