A
girl aged nine or 10 sits
hugging her knees on a beach,
staring at the surf. Normally,
her blue eyes sparkle with
determination. Today, though, they’re
wide with fear. She has set her heart
on a triathlon but she needs to practise
something that terrifies her. She needs
to swim out into the deep, open sea.
Imagine you’re her dad beside her. What
would you say? Tell her there’s nothing to be
afraid of? Point out that everyone else can
do it? Give up and take her home?
Being a parent is full of dilemmas like
this one. You want to protect your kids from
failure or hurt but you also want them to be
brave and enjoy great triumphs.
In short, you want your children
to be adventurers — and not just the
outdoorsy ones! Adventurers come in lots
of different guises. You’ll find them at
scout camps or they might take difficult
subjects at school. As adults, they could
wear crampons or they might wear a suit
and challenge themselves professionally.
Adventurers, put simply, are people who
step outside their comfort zones.
Adventurers also have a few things
in common. They have big imaginations
but are grounded in reality. They seize
opportunities but understand failure.
They’re brave yet can judge risk.
It sounds pretty good, right? Who wouldn’t
love for their toddler to need less coaxing to
try new things or for their anxious teenager
to be more resilient and follow their dreams?
The answer, oddly, seems to be lots of us.Are adventurers a threatened
species?
Humans are born to be adventurous,
explains parenting author Maggie Dent:
“All babies are born with what we call
a seeking mechanism in the brain.
Because the brain isn’t fully formed — it’s
completely undercooked, just neurons
without connectors — the human being is
wired to seek and explore, to build theseconnections.” So, why are there so many
news stories about children losing their
courage and resilience?
According to Maggie, two things changed
in recent decades that are messing with
kids. First, the world became more risk-
averse, so now even walking to school is
frowned on by some. Then came the idea
of a “perfect parent”, part of which means
having compliant, bump-free kids.
You’re likely to have not chosen this.
In fact, you might have already decided to
fight back. You’ve maybe grabbed a map,
a torch and a hat and you’re wondering ...
what next? Well, it seems the answer is
reassuringly simple: it’s to do less.
Let’s take a look at what a few top
adventurers had to say about nurturing
bravery, curiosity and resilience in kids.- Encourage nature play
In 2017, Lisa Blair became the first
woman to sail solo around Antarctica.
For 183 days she braved wild seas and
freezing temperatures and says she’d
never have pulled it off if she hadn’t
grown up playing outdoors with sticks
and mud beside the creek near her
Queensland home.
“I wouldn’t say I was more or less
brave than your average kid — I think your
average kid just needs to be exposed to an
environment that allows them to become
adventurous,” says Lisa, who, in 2018,
also sailed solo around Australia.
This wild play builds children’s
adventurousness in several ways,
explains Anya Perkins from the not-for-
profit Nature Play QLD. First, playing
with sticks, stones and other found
objects boosts imagination because,
unlike most modern toys, a stick can be
anything from a sword to a broom.
“As a kid I had a wild imagination,”
says Lisa. “Sailing around Antarctica
solo in my mind was possible because
I already had that big imagination. I just
had to figure out how to structure it.”
Second, because it’s child-led, they
discover their own interests and motivations
and can learn about setbacks outside the
more structured school environment. These
are exactly the kinds of skills children
will need if, say, their mast snaps off 1000
nautical miles from land, as Lisa’s did.
“The difference between me and
someone who’s sitting on the fence is
I took one step forward, then another, then
another,” says Lisa. “If I took every ‘no’ that
I received, I never would have got here.”- Celebrate failures
As a teenager, American author and
adventurer Caroline Paul also dreamt of
doing something big. She didn’t have Lisa’s
sailing skills — or any other specific skills,
in fact — so she chose a challenge she
reckoned anyone could do.
She roped in a friend and called the local
newspaper. She was going to set a world
record for crawling.
Only she didn’t. She gave up after 12
knee-chafing miles. “It was ridiculous,
it was an aspiration and a dream, and
there was an edge of absurdity to it,” says
Caroline, an ultralight pilot and ex-firefighter
who describes the events in her book The
Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic
Adventure. “But it was kind of magnificent,
too. And failing at it — well, it didn’t feel this
way at the time, but how many people have
actually tried to set a world record?”
Caroline learnt that failure isn’t fatal;
it’s part of living bravely.
So, let’s all ask ourselves something.
Do I celebrate my child’s failures as well as
their successes? Do I “helicopter” in when
my child is struggling or stand back — then
congratulate them for trying?
Letting children fail takes courage but,
when coupled with the right kind of gentle
reassurance and support, it also builds
resilience, say psychologists Dr Daniel
Siegel and Dr Tina Payne Bryson in The Yes
Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity
and Resilience in Your Child.
How to raise
an adventurer
We’d all like our children to be brave, try new things and accept failure
— but how can we nurture this? Here’s the advice of some of Australia’s
top adventurers (and one of their mums!)Wo rds JACQUI HAWKINSPhotography^ GettyImages40 | wellbeing.com.au
parenting
ADVENTUROUS KIDS